Samson and Delilah in Medieval Insular French

THE NEW MIDDLE AGES Series Editor: Bonnie Wheeler

SAMSON AND DELILAH IN MEDIEVAL INSULAR FRENCH Translation and Adaptation

Catherine Léglu

The New Middle Ages Series Editor Bonnie Wheeler English and Medieval Studies Southern Methodist University Dallas, TX, USA

The New Middle Ages is a series dedicated to pluridisciplinary studies of medieval cultures, with particular emphasis on recuperating women’s history and on feminist and gender analyses. This peer-reviewed series includes both scholarly monographs and essay collections. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14239

Catherine Léglu

Samson and Delilah in Medieval Insular French Translation and Adaptation

Catherine Léglu Department of Modern Languages and European Studies University of Reading Reading, UK

The New Middle Ages ISBN 978-3-319-90637-9 ISBN 978-3-319-90638-6  (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90638-6 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018949353 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: © Melisa Hasan This Palgrave Pivot imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgements

Many colleagues and friends have contributed directly and indirectly to this book. The idea came out of two invitations. One was a contribution to a conference on the manuscripts of Reading Abbey, co-organised in 2015 by Anne Lawrence and Laura Cleaver for the University of Reading’s Graduate Centre for Medieval Studies. The other was an introductory chapter to a volume devoted to performance in the Middle Ages, edited by Pauline Souleau and Henry Hope. Both projects led me to conclude that there was more to be said about the translation of this biblical narrative in medieval culture. Papers from various stages of this project were presented at the conference ‘New Perspectives in Occitan Literature’ at the IMLR, September 2015, the Annual Conference of the Society for French Studies, Glasgow, July 2016, and at the International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds, July 2017. Peter Kruschwitz helped me with the epigraphy in Chapter 2. Françoise Le Saux, Jim Simpson and Lindy Grant read drafts and made many useful suggestions. I am grateful also for the generous and helpful comments and suggestions of Peter Davies, Marianne Ailes, Linda Paterson, Simon Gaunt, Tom Hinton, Daron Burrows, Rebecca Rist, Irène Fabry-Tehranchi, Paola Nasti, Anne Marigold Norbye, Ardis Butterfield, Jim Simpson, Kathryn Smith, Brent Pitts and Sara James. The University of Reading’s Department of Modern Languages and European Studies granted me a term’s study leave in which to see this project through to its conclusion. Thank you also to my husband and children for their forbearance. v

vi   

Acknowledgements

Parts of Chapter 3 are reproduced with permission from the editors from my chapter, ‘Giving Voice to Samson and Delilah: Troubadour and Monastic Songs of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries’, in Performing Medieval Text, ed. Ardis Butterfield, Pauline Souleau and Henry Hope (Oxford: MHRA—Legenda, 2017), 39–52. Parts of Chapter 4 are reproduced with permission from my article, ‘Reading Abbey’s Anglo-Norman French translation of the Bible: London British Library Royal MS 1 C III.’ special issue of Reading Medieval Studies, edited by Laura Cleaver, 42 (2016), 131–155.

Contents

1 Interpretations 1 2 Visual Culture 27 3 Verse and Music 57 4 Prose and Image 87 Conclusion 121 Index 123

vii

List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Fig. 2.2 Fig. 4.1 Fig. 4.2 Fig. 4.3 Fig. 4.4 Fig. 4.5 Fig. 4.6

Tympanum depicting Samson and the lion. St Mary Magdalene’s Church, Stretton Sugwas, Herefordshire. Reproduced by permission of Historic England Archive 29 © Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Tableman, walrus ivory, depicting Samson and Delilah, probably England (possibly St Albans), c. 1130–1140 38 © British Library Board. British Library MS Royal 2 B VII, f. 46v 93 Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München, Cod. gall. 16, fol. 94 95 Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München, Cod. gall. 16, fol. 93v 96 Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München, Cod. gall. 16, fol. 95v 97 © British Library Board. British Library MS Royal 2 B VII, fol. 94v 104 © British Library Board. British Library MS Royal 2 B VII, fol. 122 107

ix

Douay-Rheims Bible, Judges 13–16

Each of the many different versions of the Bible reflects historical ­processes of translation and reception. The fourth-century Latin Vulgate, translated by Jerome from Greek and Hebrew versions, is the common source for the medieval translations and adaptations that are discussed in this book. All quotations from it are taken from Biblia Sacra iuxta vulgatam versionem, ed. by R. Weber and R. Gryson, 4th ed. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1994). Most recent English-language studies of Judges 13–16 cite the King James Bible (published in 1611, revised in 1769); however, it is easier to render the idiosyncrasies of the Vulgate text by consulting its closest translation into English, the DouayRheims Bible (1582 to 1610, extensively revised in 1749–1752). Using an early modern text also highlights the linguistic gap between Jerome’s fourth-century work and writers of the twelfth to fourteenth centuries. The extract below from the Douay-Rheims Bible and all other citations from this text are taken from The Holy Bible, translated from the Latin Vulgateand diligently compared with other editions in divers l­anguages (Douay, AD 1609; Rheims, AD 1582), Rev. ed. Richard Challoner (London: Burns, Oates and Washbourne, 1914). Chapter 13 1. And the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the Lord: and he delivered them into the hands of the Philistines forty years. 2. Now there was a certain man of Saraa, and of the race of Dan, whose name was Manue, and his wife was barren. xi

xii   

Douay-Rheims Bible, Judges 13–16

3. And an angel of the Lord appeared to her, and said: Thou art ­barren and without children: but thou shalt conceive and bear a son. 4. Now therefore beware, and drink no wine nor strong drink, and eat not any unclean thing. 5. Because thou shalt conceive, and bear a son, and no razor shall touch his head: for he shall be a Nazarite of God, from his infancy, and from his mother’s womb, and he shall begin to deliver Israel from the hands of the Philistines. 6. And when she was come to her husband, she said to him: A man of God came to me, having the countenance of an angel, very awful. And when I asked him whence he came, and by what name he was called, he would not tell me: 7. But he answered thus: Behold thou shalt conceive and bear a son: beware thou drink no wine, nor strong drink, nor eat any unclean thing: for the child shall be a Nazarite of God from his infancy, from his mother’s womb until the day of his death. 8. Then Manue prayed to the Lord, and said: I beseech thee, O Lord, that the man of God, whom thou didst send, may come again, and teach us what we ought to do concerning the child, that shall be born. 9. And the Lord heard the prayer of Manue, and the angel of the Lord appeared again to his wife, as she was sitting in the field. But Manue her husband was not with her. And when she saw the angel, 10. She made haste, and ran to her husband: and told him, saying: Behold the man hath appeared to me, whom I saw before. 11. He rose up, and followed his wife: and coming to the man, said to him: Art thou he that spoke to the woman? And he answered: I am. 12. And Manue said to him: When thy word shall come to pass, what wilt thou that the child should do? or from what shall he keep himself? 13. And the angel of the Lord said to Manue: From all the things I have spoken of to thy wife, let her refrain herself: 14. And let her eat nothing that cometh of the vine, neither let her drink wine or strong drink, nor eat any unclean thing: and whatsoever I have commanded her, let her fulfil and observe. 15. And Manue said to the angel of the Lord: I beseech thee to consent to my request, and let us dress a kid for thee.

Douay-Rheims Bible, Judges 13–16   

xiii

16. And the angel answered him: If thou press me I will not eat of thy bread: but if thou wilt offer a holocaust, offer it to the Lord. And Manue knew not it was the angel of the Lord. 17. And he said to him: What is thy name, that, if thy word shall come to pass, we may honour thee? 18.  And he answered him: Why askest thou my name, which is ­wonderful? 19. Then Manue took a kid of the flocks, and the libations, and put them upon a rock, offering to the Lord, who doth wonderful things: and he and his wife looked on. 20. And when the flame from the altar went up towards heaven, the angel of the Lord ascended also in the same. And when Manue and his wife saw this, they fell flat on the ground; 21. And the angel of the Lord appeared to them no more. And forthwith Manue understood that it was an angel of the Lord, 22. And he said to his wife: We shall certainly die, because we have seen God. 23. And his wife answered him: If the Lord had a mind to kill us, he would not have received a holocaust and libations at our hands; neither would he have shewed us all these things, nor have told us the things that are to come. 24. And she bore a son, and called his name Samson. And the child grew, and the Lord blessed him. 25. And the Spirit of the Lord began to be with him in the camp of Dan, between Saraa and Esthaol. Chapter 14 1.  Then Samson went down to Thamnatha, and seeing there a woman of the daughters of the Philistines, 2. He came up, and told his father and his mother, saying: I saw a woman in Thamnatha of the daughters of the Philistines: I beseech you, take her for me to wife. 3. And his father and mother said to him: Is there no woman among the daughters of thy brethren, or among all my people, that thou wilt take a wife of the Philistines, who are uncircumcised? And Samson said to his father: Take this woman for me; for she hath pleased my eyes.

xiv   

Douay-Rheims Bible, Judges 13–16

4. Now his parents knew not that the thing was done by the Lord, and that he sought an occasion against the Philistines: for at that time the Philistines had dominion over Israel. 5.  Then Samson went down with his father and mother to Thamnatha. And when they were come to the vineyards of the town, behold a young lion met him, raging and roaring. 6. And the Spirit of the Lord came upon Samson, and he tore the lion as he would have torn a kid in pieces, having nothing at all in his hand: and he would not tell this to his father and mother. 7. And he went down, and spoke to the woman that had pleased his eyes. 8. And after some days, returning to take her, he went aside to see the carcass of the lion, and behold there was a swarm of bees in the mouth of the lion, and a honey-comb. 9. And when he had taken it in his hands, he went on eating: and coming to his father and mother, he gave them of it, and they ate: but he would not tell them that he had taken the honey from the body of the lion. 10. So his father went down to the woman, and made a feast for his son Samson: for so the young men used to do. 11. And when the citizens of that place saw him, they brought him thirty companions to be with him. 12. And Samson said to them: I will propose to you a riddle, which if you declare unto me within the seven days of the feast, I will give you thirty shirts, and as many coats: 13. But if you shall not be able to declare it, you shall give me thirty shirts and the same number of coats. They answered him: Put forth the riddle, that we may hear it. 14. And he said to them: Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness. And they could not for three days expound the riddle. 15. And when the seventh day came, they said to the wife of Samson: Sooth thy husband, and persuade him to tell thee what the riddle meaneth. But if thou wilt not do it, we will burn thee, and thy father’s house. Have you called us to the wedding on purpose to strip us? 16. So she wept before Samson and complained, saying: Thou hatest me, and dost not love me: therefore thou wilt not expound to me

Douay-Rheims Bible, Judges 13–16   

xv

the riddle, which thou hast proposed to the sons of my people. But he answered: I would not tell it to my father and mother: and how can I tell it to thee? 17. So she wept before him the seven days of the feast: and, at length, on the seventh day, as she was troublesome to him, he expounded it. And she immediately told her countrymen. 18. And they, on the seventh day before the sun went down, said to him: What is sweeter than honey? and what is stronger than a lion? And he said to them: If you had not ploughed with my heifer, you had not found out my riddle. 19. And the Spirit of the Lord came upon him, and he went down to Ascalon, and slew there thirty men whose garments he took away, and gave to them that had declared the riddle. And being exceeding angry, he went up to his father’s house: 20. But his wife took one of his friends and bridal companions for her husband. Chapter 15 1. And a while after, when the days of the wheat harvest were at hand, Samson came, meaning to visit his wife, and he brought her a kid of the flock. And when he would have gone into her chamber, as usual, her father would not suffer him, saying: 2. I thought thou hadst hated her, and therefore I gave her to thy friend: but she hath a sister, who is younger and fairer than she, take her to wife instead of her. 3. And Samson answered him: From this day I shall be blameless in what I do against the Philistines: for I will do you evils. 4. And he went and caught three hundred foxes, and coupled them tail to tail, and fastened torches between the tails: 5. And setting them on fire he let the foxes go, that they might run about hither and thither. And they presently went into the standing corn of the Philistines. Which being set on fire, both the corn that was already carried together, and that which was yet standing, was all burnt, insomuch that the flame consumed also the vineyards and the oliveyards. 6. Then the Philistines said: Who hath done this thing? And it was answered: Samson, the son in law of the Thamnathite, because

xvi   

Douay-Rheims Bible, Judges 13–16

he took away his wife, and gave her to another, hath done these things. And the Philistines went up and burnt both the woman and her father. 7. But Samson said to them: Although you have done this, yet will I be revenged of you, and then I will be quiet. 8. And he made a great slaughter of them, so that in astonishment they laid the calf of the leg upon the thigh. And going down he dwelt in a cavern of the rock Etam. 9. Then the Philistines going up into the land of Juda, camped in the place which afterwards was called Lechi, that is, the Jawbone, where their army was spread abroad. 10. And the men of the tribe of Juda said to them: Why are you come up against us? They answered: We are come to bind Samson, and to pay him for what he hath done against us. 11. Wherefore three thousand men of Juda went down to the cave of the rock Etam, and said to Samson: Knowest thou not that the Philistines rule over us? Why wouldst thou do thus? And he said to them: As they did to me, so have I done to them. 12. And they said to him: We are come to bind thee, and to deliver thee into the hands of the Philistines. And Samson said to them: Swear to me, and promise me that you will not kill me. 13.  They said: We will not kill thee: but we will deliver thee up bound. And they bound him with two new cords, and brought him from the rock Etam. 14. Now when he was come to the place of the Jawbone, and the Philistines shouting went to meet him, the Spirit of the Lord came strongly upon him: and as flax is wont to be consumed at the approach of fire, so the bands with which he was bound were broken and loosed. 15. And finding a jawbone, even the jawbone of an ass, which lay there, catching it up, he slew therewith a thousand men. 16. And he said: With the jawbone of an ass, with the jaw of the colt of asses, I have destroyed them, and have slain a thousand men. 17.  And when he had ended these words, singing, he threw the jawbone out of his hand, and called the name of that place Ramathlechi, which is interpreted the lifting up of the jawbone. 18. And being very thirsty, he cried to the Lord, and said: Thou hast given this very great deliverance and victory into the hand of thy servant: and behold I die for thirst, and shall fall into the hands of the uncircumcised.

Douay-Rheims Bible, Judges 13–16   

xvii

19. Then the Lord opened a great tooth in the jaw of the ass and waters issued out of it. And when he had drunk them, he refreshed his spirit, and recovered his strength. Therefore the name of that place was called The Spring of him that invoked from the jawbone, until this present day. 20. And he judged Israel, in the days of the Philistines, twenty years. Chapter 16 1. He went also into Gaza, and saw there a woman, a harlot, and went in unto her. 2. And when the Philistines had heard this, and it was noised about among them, that Samson was come into the city, they surrounded him, setting guards at the gate of the city, and watching there all the night in silence, that in the morning they might kill him as he went out. 3. But Samson slept till midnight, and then rising, he took both the doors of the gate, with the posts thereof and the bolt, and laying them on his shoulders, carried them up to the top of the hill, which looketh towards Hebron. 4. After this he loved a woman, who dwelt in the valley of Sorec, and she was called Dalila. 5. And the princes of the Philistines came to her, and said. Deceive him, and learn of him wherein his great strength lieth, and how we may be able to overcome him, to bind and afflict him: which if thou shalt do, we will give thee every one of us eleven hundred pieces of silver. 6. And Dalila said to Samson: Tell me, I beseech thee, wherein thy greatest strength lieth, and what it is, wherewith if thou wert bound, thou couldst not break loose. 7. And Samson answered her: If I shall be bound with seven cords, made of sinews not yet dry, but still moist, I shall be weak like other men. 8. And the princes of the Philistines brought unto her seven cords, such as he spoke of, with which she bound him; 9.  Men lying privately in wait with her, and in the chamber, expecting the event of the thing, and she cried out to him: The Philistines are upon thee, Samson. And he broke the bands, as a man would break a thread of tow twined with spittle, when it smelleth the fire: so it was not known wherein his strength lay.

xviii   

Douay-Rheims Bible, Judges 13–16

10. And Dalila said to him: Behold thou hast mocked me, and hast told me a false thing: but now at least tell me wherewith thou mayest be bound. 11. And he answered her: If I shall be bound with new ropes, that were never in work, I shall be weak and like other men. 12. Dalila bound him again with these, and cried out: The Philistines are upon thee, Samson, there being an ambush prepared for him in the chamber. But he broke the bands like threads of webs. 13. And Dalila said to him again: How long dost thou deceive me, and tell me lies? Shew me wherewith thou mayest be bound. And Samson answered her: If thou plattest the seven locks of my head with a lace, and tying them round about a nail, fastenest it in the ground, I shall be weak. 14. And when Dalila had done this, she said to him: The Philistines are upon thee, Samson. And awaking out of his sleep, he drew out the nail with the hairs and the lace. 15. And Dalila said to him: How dost thou say thou lovest me, when thy mind is not with me? Thou hast told me lies these three times, and wouldst not tell me wherein thy greatest strength lieth. 16. And when she pressed him much, and continually hung upon him for many days, giving him no time to rest, his soul fainted away, and was wearied even unto death. 17. Then opening the truth of the thing, he said to her: The razor hath never come upon my head, for I am a Nazarite, that is to say, consecrated to God from my mother’s womb: If my head be shaven, my strength shall depart from me, and I shall become weak, and shall be like other men. 18. Then seeing that he had discovered to her all his mind, she sent to the princes of the Philistines, saying: Come up this once more, for now he hath opened his heart to me. And they went up, taking with them the money which they had promised. 19. But she made him sleep upon her knees, and lay his head in her bosom. And she called a barber and shaved his seven locks, and began to drive him away, and thrust him from her: for immediately his strength departed from him. 20. And she said: The Philistines are upon thee, Samson. And awaking from sleep, he said in his mind: I will go out as I did before, and shake myself, not knowing that the Lord was departed from him.

Douay-Rheims Bible, Judges 13–16   

xix

21. Then the Philistines seized upon him, and forthwith pulled out his eyes, and led him bound in chains to Gaza, and shutting him up in prison made him grind. 22. And now his hair began to grow again, 23. And the princes of the Philistines assembled together, to offer great sacrifices to Dagon their god, and to make merry, saying: Our god hath delivered our enemy Samson into our hands. 24. And the people also seeing this, praised their god, and said the same: Our god hath delivered our adversary into our hands, him that destroyed our country, and killed very many. 25. And rejoicing in their feasts, when they had now taken their good cheer, they commanded that Samson should be called, and should play before them. And being brought out of prison, he played before them; and they made him stand between two pillars. 26. And he said to the lad that guided his steps: Suffer me to touch the pillars which support the whole house, and let me lean upon them, and rest a little. 27. Now the house was full of men and women, and all the princes of the Philistines were there. Moreover about three thousand persons of both sexes, from the roof and the higher part of the house, were beholding Samson’s play. 28. But he called upon the Lord, saying: O Lord God remember me, and restore to me now my former strength, O my God, that I may revenge myself on my enemies, and for the loss of my two eyes I may take one revenge. 29. And laying hold on both the pillars on which the house rested, and holding the one with his right hand, and the other with his left, 30.  He said: Let me die with the Philistines. And when he had strongly shook the pillars, the house fell upon all the princes, and the rest of the multitude, that was there: and he killed many more at his death, than he had killed before in his life. 31. And his brethren and all his kindred, going down took his body, and buried it between Saraa and Esthaol, in the burying place of his father Manue: and he judged Israel twenty years.

CHAPTER 1

Interpretations

Abstract  This introductory chapter sets out the temporal and geographical frame for the study. It then reviews recent interpretations of the Samson story and its protagonist (Judges 13–16). The discussion moves on to suggest that medieval interpretations of this narrative also reflect the story’s focus on the hero’s instability and his moral ambivalence. The final part of this chapter compares the subtle interpretative shifts in the successive copies of a prose translation of the scene when Delilah shears Samson’s hair (Judges 16:19–20). Keywords  Medieval and modern exegesis Translation · Theology

· Reception · Adaptation

This study of translation and adaptation in medieval culture examines the biblical story of Samson as it appears in French and Latin verse and prose, as well as in art and in music. Samson’s biography is narrated in the Book of Judges 13–16. It is both familiar and unfamiliar to modern readers, and it was equally so for medieval audiences. Samson was known and thought about in many ways across medieval Europe, so this study is limited to south-west England in the High Middle Ages. The narrative was owned by generations of individuals, even in a relatively limited geographical and historical context, as a story, an object and a set of questions about men, women, strength and love. Despite its relatively short length and its limited significance for biblical chronology, the story © The Author(s) 2018 C. Léglu, Samson and Delilah in Medieval Insular French, The New Middle Ages, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90638-6_1

1

2 

C. LÉGLU

of Samson stands out as multi-layered. It raises more questions than it answers about the value of physical strength, the power of emotions and the bonds created by an oath or a faith. Strength and weakness, mastery and victimhood, are the binary pairing that subtends and defines this heroic figure. His conception and birth predicted by an angel, the young Samson’s mother commits him to the Nazirite oath: he will preserve his exceptional strength if he keeps his hair untrimmed and avoids consuming wine or unclean food. When Samson reaches adulthood, he persuades his parents to allow him to marry a Philistine woman. He kills a lion in secret, and a year later, he gathers honey from the beast’s carcass. Samson challenges the Philistines at the wedding feast with a riddle concerning that lion and that honey. The Philistines force his bride to unlock the answer to the riddle, but their success provokes Samson’s jealousy and he massacres his wedding guests. He returns a year later to find that the woman has been married off to someone else. Vengefully, he sets fire to the Philistines’ vines and fields by tying torches to the tails of foxes, and he accidentally murders his former wife and father-in-law in the process. Samson attempts to withdraw from society, but this also fails. The Philistines capture him in his cave (he frees himself), and they trap him in the city of Gaza with a Philistine prostitute (he steals the city’s gates). Finally, Samson falls in love with Delilah, who teases the secret of his strength from him, shaves off his hair and hands him to the Philistines. Blinded and captive, his strength returns as his hair grows back. He pulls down the pillars of a building, killing himself and the Philistines who have gathered there to feast. The multiple, complex aspects of the narrative can be seen even in a limited study such as this, focusing on receptions of the Medieval Latin Bible (Vulgate) text and therefore the Christian tradition. The mediation of biblical text through liturgy, performance and preaching has been studied recently by Poleg.1 In liturgy of the use of Rome, the book of Judges was read throughout Lent. The Samson story came shortly before the beginning of Holy Week, and this is certainly one reason for its association with the Passion in typological exegesis.2 Copies of the Vulgate were not easily available, but this was far from the only means of accessing biblical texts. As Hoogvliet has suggested, verses and narratives were extracted, translated, dramatised and expounded. Reading practices were discontinuous and did not always involve the written word.3 Such practices of reception and reinvention produced sculptures and musical

1 INTERPRETATIONS 

3

works as well as literary texts and in turn either introduced or permitted divergent interpretations. The plethora of Samsons in the visual arts also draws attention to how, where and by whom such stories were told. Samson was a warrior and a fool, absent from the Christian liturgical calendar, endowed with Christological prestige but also with human frailty. This study focuses on Bible translations, Latin songs and sculptures transmitted through abbeys, priories and churches in Western England and the Welsh Marches. It is a well-known cluster of religious houses, strong on book production and on music, but the geographical spread also corresponds to that of the so-called Herefordshire School of sculpture: the diocese of Hereford, the county of Oxfordshire and religious houses near Gloucester and Bristol (the cluster is visible on a map, online).4 My enquiry assumes that there were intellectual and cultural connections between such items as the carving of a lion-killing Samson at the parish church of Stretton Sugwas and a smaller example in the Benedictine priory of Leominster. Leominster was a daughter-house of Reading Abbey, where the lyric drama Samson, dux fortissime was sung in the thirteenth century. Further north lies the Cistercian Abbey of Buildwas, where a monk jotted down the first stanza of Samson, dux fortissime. A gaming counter depicting Samson killing a lion was thrown into the moat at Gloucester castle, near St. Peter’s Abbey (source of a commentary on the book of Judges) and a few miles from the Augustinian priory of Llanthony II. Llanthony II housed a copy of an Old French verse Old Testament poem. Taken separately, these are no more than fragments of medieval cultural production. Seen as a whole, they sketch out the ways in which the story of Samson was known and retold by several closely connected reading communities. In the twelfth century, the most learned readers could learn about Samson in monastic commentaries and read an Old French prose translation of his life (see the last part of this chapter). They could narrate the tale when they encountered religious sculptures or played a board game in a completely secular setting (Chapter 2). They could listen to a sophisticated planctus by Abelard and a verse paraphrase in French that adapted the conventions of Old French romance. In the thirteenth century, audiences and performers of the Latin musical drama Samson, dux fortissime were presented with a hero whose sufferings were likened to that of a lyric lover as much as of a saint (all in Chapter 3). By the fourteenth century, readers could choose from a visual rendition, a vernacular summary that emulated prose romances, a loose translation supported

4 

C. LÉGLU

by typological glosses or a word-for-word transposition (Chapter 4). The consistent emotional appeal of this story meant that sophisticated, even subversive, readings could emerge either through these processes of adaptation or in the minds of their readers and audiences.

Commentaries Before moving on to the medieval commentary tradition, it is important to notice the very varied modern understanding of this biblical story, as well as its ability to straddle boundaries of elite and popular culture. Samson is usually Delilah’s victim (Judges 16), and this aspect alone has received varied artistic, literary, dramatic and musical treatments, such as Milton’s Samson Agonistes (1671), adapted later as the libretto to Handel’s oratorio of 1743. Censorship prevented the performance in France of Rameau and Voltaire’s tragédie en musique, Samson (1733– 1736), although barely a decade earlier a tragi-comédie of Samson had been performed repeatedly in Paris.5 Nineteenth-century versions foregrounded Delilah’s point of view, for example in de Vigny’s La Colère de Samson.6 The poem’s subtle tension between victim and victor reappears in a different guise in the opera by Saint-Saëns (1877), where Delilah is a conventional femme fatale whose Philistine patriotism conflicts with her sexual attraction to the Israelite strong man.7 The opera’s checkered performance history has been attributed to its link with Voltaire’s anticlerical play, its allusions to France’s North African colonies and the sensual depiction of biblical subject matter.8 Contemporary poetry and popular music have drawn in varied ways on Samson and Delilah, for example in Tom Jones’s song Delilah (1968), which was later adopted as an anthem by supporters of the Welsh international rugby team. The song has been debated in the media for its alleged glorification of domestic violence.9 Carol Ann Duffy’s poem Delilah (1999) uses the first-person voice to depict the biblical heroine’s complex feelings about her brutal lover.10 In popular music again, Regina Spektor’s Samson (2006) has Delilah sing an alternative, happy and unwritten version of their relationship.11 A one-act play by Steven Berkoff, Samson’s Hair (2012), also makes Samson and Delilah relevant to the present day. Berkoff describes his biblical sources as texts that are ‘so pungent, so powerful in the stories they tell, with their strong underlying moral code, that they just cry out for reinterpretation’.12 They are also his response to anti-Israeli sentiment in the

1 INTERPRETATIONS 

5

media, drawing attention to Samson’s association with the modern state of Israel.13 In fact, Delilah is not identified as a Philistine in the Bible, unlike Samson’s wife and the prostitute that he visits.14 Nor is she de Vigny’s slave, nor the wife in Milton. Samson does not capture or wed her. These are all part of the many accretions that modern texts and adaptations have brought to this narrative. Similar complexity abounds in medieval interpretations of Judges 13–16. This is because the Book of Judges has been read in many ways. It is a compilation of older poems and narratives of uncertain historical value.15 Brettler comments that ‘no other biblical “historical” text has a similar constellation of difficulties’.16 Its structure is uneven, and some of the Judges are problematic figures of authority. The book is set in an archaic, chaotic past dominated by elected or self-appointed tribal leaders: ‘In those days there was no kings in Israel and every person did as he pleased’ (Judges 17:6 and 21:25). Brettler suggests that the Book of Judges was shaped as a political allegory, a prehistory of sorts. Niditch agrees with this view.17 She identifies three narrators: an ‘epic-bardic’ poet, a ‘theologian’ and a ‘humanist’ (understood as a dispassionate, historicising narrator).18 These three voices may of course not represent three stages of composition or redaction. They may instead emerge from the book’s uncomfortable mix of epic, religion and history.19 The story of Samson stands out even within this difficult context as an uneven, very repetitive narrative with epic features.20 Its close relationship with the classical Hercules is in all probability not accidental.21 As a recent edited volume says, Samson is both ‘hero’ and ‘fool’, combining elements of the sacred and the abject, of tragedy and bawdy comedy. Samson also partakes of the ‘wild man’ in ancient near eastern traditions. At his most powerful, he is a master of the beasts. Associated with raw food, he kills his fellow-humans with animal bones rather than forged metal weaponry, and his disastrous relationships with women compound his failure to enter settled society.22 Moreover, the marginal status of Samson is not limited to his inability to live peacefully in cities. He is ‘the man of margins and of breaches’, a figure who challenges boundaries and thereby serves to affirm them. For Lemardelé, his struggle with his Nazirite vow makes him an emblematic figure for young warriors.23 In her groundbreaking studies of the Book of Judges, Bal emphasised that the book opens debates concerning gender, authority and agency. Delilah is one of several ambivalent female figures in the story

6 

C. LÉGLU

of Samson, as well as within the book of Judges.24 According to Bal, the unstable, clashing meanings of the biblical text are sources of creativity. She suggests: ‘Texts by definition being semiotic constructs, necessitating the active participation of readers or listeners for their existence, the textual object is dynamic, unstable, elusive’.25 The reader’s action consists of imposing interpretative frames (which she terms ‘codes’) on the unruly texts. None of these ‘codes’ are completely reliable, and as a result, the text itself is endlessly open to further readings. Some of the trends in scholarship over the past three decades have been summarised recently by Assis and by Exum.26 Some studies have focused on Samson’s biography, notably his misfortunes in love. He falls in love with a woman from afar and eventually destroys her. He then has a loveless fling that ends in the destruction of that woman’s city, and he loses his life through ‘blind’ (unthinking) love for a third woman, one who does not love him back.27 There are other overarching motifs and enquiries: the vow that cannot be kept, the dangerous effects of a riddle and the problem of lacking self-knowledge.28 Gunn has underlined the importance of two of Exum’s published interpretations of the Samson story: first as tragedy, and second as comedy.29 Gunn counters Exum’s focus on Samson as a flawed individual whose lack of self-understanding leads him to repeatedly break his preordained covenant with God. He asks: ‘Who bullies whom in this story?’30 His reading of Judges 13–16 anticipates that of Grossman, seeing Samson as a figure trapped within a divine plan that he cannot comprehend and who tries to break with the separateness that has been imposed on him from before conception to the end of his life.31 In Gunn’s reading, Samson’s apparently unmotivated vendettas and acts of violence are to be read as evidence that God and he are in a state of tension: ‘Samson’s god resists scrutiny. The character slides in and out of the narrative’.32 For Niditch, the fact that the deity remains firmly ‘in the background’ is part of what makes the Book of Judges an ambivalent and often surprising text. Niditch also points out the importance of archaism: it depicts a society’s struggle to define leadership.33 According to Galpaz-Feller, the redactor of the Book of Judges may have intended to present a cycle of flawed leaders, of whom Samson is the last and the worst.34 She concludes, however, that the redactor failed to stifle this story’s unruly, non-theological, blend of comedy and tragedy. Moving beyond scholarly debates, Grossman’s moving reflection on the story stresses the relevance of the Samson figure to a modern

1 INTERPRETATIONS 

7

readership. By focusing on the hero’s tensions with his parents as well as with his own self-understanding, Grossman’s book has inspired further discussions about the story’s potential importance for the cultural construction of masculinity and the corresponding vision of ­femininity.35 The myth of Samson has been interpreted in terms of the troubled construction of masculinity, from the ‘Samson complex’, consisting of a compulsion to repeat acts of violence linked to disappointments in love, to a frame for understanding the social pressures on young boys, mother– child relations and heterosexual desire.36 Modern interpretations of the story of Samson are varied, multi-layered, subjective and sometimes applied to general ideas concerning morality, gender and politics. As Dinkova-Bruun has shown, medieval exegesis of Samson is equally varied and often contradictory.37 In medieval Jewish commentaries, he was a giant, a hero, a martyr or simply an unstable man. Minor traditions developed, notably an image of Samson uprooting a tree.38 In Christian exegesis, he is most often a prefiguration of Christ. His inclusion in Islam is disputed.39 Richard of Saint-Victor’s Liber exceptionum provides a standard Christian typological interpretation, reading the Hebrew Bible as a foretelling of the Gospels. Typological readings create simple binary relationships between Old and New Testaments. Samson’s birth, like that of Christ, is foretold by an angel. Samson takes a wife from among foreign peoples, as Christ takes his followers. The gates of Gaza prefigure the Harrowing of Hell, and Samson’s suicidal massacre symbolises the Redemption: Samson kills the lion, and Christ kills the Devil. Samson extracts the honey comb from the jaws of a lion, and Christ extracts humankind from the jaws of a lion: wax is the body, and honey is the spirit.40

However, Richard of Saint-Victor also offers either a moral or figurative interpretation that invites readers to apply the Samson story to themselves. The lion-killer who finds honey in the lion’s mouth models the individual who resists and defeats the blandishments of the Devil. Dinkova-Bruun describes tropological glosses as characteristic of the ‘literal’ approach of the Victorine school.41 Tropology humanises Samson, and the reader is encouraged to empathise with his vulnerability. Emotional identifications with the suffering and foolish Samson offer a direct connection with modern psychoanalytical readings of the story, described by Kutz in terms of the discovery that ‘the legendary hero…

8 

C. LÉGLU

was also a mere man, afflicted with a psychological disorder’.42 Reflecting on Samson in such terms invites a degree of self-scrutiny that leads inexorably towards empathy. Studies of the intellectual influence on medieval vernacular literature suffer from a frustrating lack of identifiable schools or masters, but the ‘Herefordshire School’ cluster of texts and images has both.43 In the 1130s–1140s, the School of Saint-Victor flourished as a meeting-point for the intellectuals of the Parisian schools. It fostered a distinctive methodology for Bible studies, based on literal and historical interpretation. The canons established a dialogue with Jewish scholars and applied methods of rabbinical exegesis to a text that they understood increasingly as a historical rather than a typological document. A preference for moral teaching produced a new emphasis on literal, historical interpretation. These masters also built on their influence over the royal court to make Paris an important seat of learning.44 The first daughter-house of SaintVictor of Paris was established at Shobdon in Herefordshire around 1140, and it eventually settled at Wigmore, with satellites in Bristol and the surrounding region. The Victorine house recruited a noted biblical exegete, Andrew of Saint-Victor, who was remembered over the next hundred years as an important Christian Hebraist.45 Another important centre of learning was the Augustinian priory of Llanthony and its second foundation outside Gloucester from 1137 (Llanthony II) which held a verse translation of the Old Testament. This poem includes an allusion to the planctus cycle by Peter Abelard, which includes a planctus for Samson (see Chapter 3). The circulation of Jewish exegesis concerning Samson in AngloNorman regions is much harder to establish. The rabbinic school at Rouen was a centre for English students, but none of Abraham ben Ezra’s many biblical commentaries of the mid-twelfth century (produced there as well as Italy and in London) concern the book of Judges.46 While it is now agreed that England’s Jewish communities used French as a spoken and possibly a written vernacular, witnesses to HebrewFrench poems are from the late thirteenth century and from Northern French centres of literary culture such as Troyes.47 There were, however, transfers of knowledge and of texts from Latin to Hebrew and vice versa, possibly involving oral translation into French.48 Nor were these inevitably hostile disputations: Berechiah Ben Naṭronai translated the work of Adelard of Bath, and he stated in his commentary on Job that he had gleaned insights from a Christian cleric who had travelled in Muslim

1 INTERPRETATIONS 

9

lands.49 Saenger has suggested that respectful exchanges were likely the source of a new chapter division of the Bible that appears first at the Benedictine Abbey of Saint Albans and became the basis of the Paris Bible.50 The best evidence for how the Samson story was interpreted outside Victorine circles in south-west England can be found in a commentary on the book of Judges by the Benedictine monk Osbern Pinnock of Gloucester, who dedicated it to his former abbot, Gilbert Foliot, bishop of Hereford (1148–1163) (BL Royal 6 D IX).51 Osbern claims that he was a former schoolmaster in his treatise for teachers of Latin grammar entitled Panormia. The only surviving copy of this work was dedicated to the next abbot of Gloucester, Hamelin (1148–1179), and it is in Hereford Cathedral.52 In his Panormia, Osbern cites such classical sources as Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the Ilias Latina and Martianus Capella.53 He was not the only biblical commentator active in these regions, as can be seen from the late twelfth-century Book of Judges with Glossa ordinaria that was either copied or assembled at Reading Abbey (BL Add MS 54230). Osbern’s treatise is designed to support preaching to the laity as much as to monastic listeners. He draws on sources such as bestiaries to offer both allegorical and moral interpretations. Samson’s lion-killing (Judges 14:5–6) is the object of a short account of lion symbolism (f.123v). It is a symbol of strength, the king of the beasts, the Lion of Judah and a Christological redeemer (f.123v, col.1). Osbern identifies Samson’s thirty foxes with the prosecution of heresy, reading the fox conventionally as the heretic (Judges, 15:4–6) (f.147v).54 Samson killing Philistines with the jawbone of an ass is associated with the carnal donkey (Judges 15:14–17; f.149v, col.1). Riding an ass is interpreted as subduing the lusts of the body (f.82v).55 Thurlby has suggested that an early manuscript of the Bestiary, possibly owned in Hereford or Gloucester, was important to ‘Herefordshire School’ sculpture, so it is interesting to see Osbern including beasts such as the Onocentaur (defined using the Moralia in Job as a hybrid of an ass and a bull, lust and pride) (f.84v).56 Osbern’s two interpretations of the Delilah episode are self-contained and do not complement each other, except in their shared vision of the story of Samson as a series of attempted religious and sexual seductions. He reproduces anti-Jewish polemic, reading the woman of Gaza as the Jews and Delilah as Synagogue. The barber who comes to shave

10 

C. LÉGLU

Samson symbolises the crucifixion (f.150r), as does Samson’s position at his moment of death between two pillars, which represent the two crucified thieves on either side of Christ (f.150v). It is important to note that as his text is ostensibly designed to support Foliot’s preaching, Osbern’s anti-Jewish content might have had a direct application. Gloucester’s Jews endured a ritual murder accusation in 1168, and the first signs of what would become an important Jewry in Hereford appear during the period that corresponds to Foliot’s term of office.57 The second interpretation that Osbern offers of Samson’s life recasts the three women that he loves (especially Delilah) as symbols of the lustful body (ff.151r–v). Much of Osbern’s commentary draws attention to women as body (the text that follows his commentary on Judges is about the Incarnation). When Delilah makes Samson recline on her knees and breast, she represents sin’s oppression of the body (f.151v), and this time the barber represents the Devil. Samson’s suicidal destruction of the temple of Dagon no longer prefigures the humiliations of the crucifixion. Instead, it signifies the soul’s victorious destruction of its sinful body (f.152v, col.1). Osbern’s two retellings of the Delilah episode offer a glimpse of a story told and retold within different interpretative frames. He follows exegetical practice by placing overlapping or contradictory meanings onto isolated verses and thereby offers the reader a range of possible ways of understanding details and associations. His commentary underlines the fluidity of medieval reading practices even for sacred texts. Narrative elements change their significance according to the frames in which they appear, as do the frames themselves. Even the dominant frame of Christianising typology does not undermine the freedom to make new, sometimes strange associations. It remains that anti-Jewish typology had direct political consequences. Lipton and Hollengreen have suggested that the French crown adopted historical books of the Old Testament because they fitted Crusading ideology, with Hebrews were recast as Christians.58 Nobel identifies a similar retrospective mapping of the crusades in the Poème anglo-­normand sur l’ancien Testament (see Chapter 3).59 This process entailed the usurpation of Jewish history from medieval Jews. As Hollengreen puts it: ‘Old Testament history was arrogated by the cadet or benjamin line of medieval Christians, who had to make sure to eliminate or neutralize their Jewish elders as heirs to the same tradition’.60 This means that anti-Jewish polemic cannot be divorced from the exegesis of Christian

1 INTERPRETATIONS 

11

Hebraists and the Victorines, because as Goodwin has argued, both are aspects of a single discursive strategy.61 Hollengreen has also argued that some treatments of biblical history were not inflected by religious polemic. Instead, their protagonists were presented in what could be described as literary terms, stressing personal experience or suffering.62 However, retellings that privileged characterisation over ideology were not necessarily a corrective to the dominant typological trend. They privileged the familiar narrative and played creative variations on the tale, rather than changing the ideological metanarrative.63 It is important to consider both the familiarity of audiences with biblical narratives and the impact upon them of different ways of framing and glossing those stories. The following example offers a striking contrast with Osbern’s commentary, because it is almost completely empty of typology or moralising. Instead, it introduces a literary twist, possibly influenced by visual art. The Anglo-Norman prose rendering of the Book of Judges was produced for ‘Maistre Richard et frere Othon’ (ll. 6–7), possibly a Provincial Master and Grand Master of the order of the Knights Templar, both of them active in the 1160–1170s.64 Five complete copies survive, one of them in Occitan, plus a fragment.65 The preface in verse explains the translator’s decision to render the Vulgate text in vernacular prose as an attempt to be faithful to the holy text: Car molt doit par grant sens ouvrer Qui tel livre veut tranlater Qu’il ne doit pas por bel diter La verite dou cens laissier, Ne si redire la verite Que son diter soit trop blasme, Et se il andeus ne puet faire A la verte se doit plus traire. Si ai je fait a mon pooir, Selon le mien poure savoir. (ll. 17–26).66

(He who wishes to translate such a book must work very intelligently, for he must not depart from the truth of the sense via lovely poetry, nor should he retell the truth to the point that his poem would be criticised. If he cannot do otherwise, then he should stick closer to the truth. That is what I have striven to do according to my poor knowledge.)

12 

C. LÉGLU

Verse is imagined as distracting ornament, while prose presents the reliable Word. Given that the Vulgate is written in verse, this preference for prose as a more reliable means of expression seems incongruous. Furthermore, the translator explains that although words have been added to the prose text, they are meant to resolve obscurities, as otherwise the uneducated audience would be confronted with little more than a riddle (ll. 38–42): Por ce que la letre est oscure, Trop cloze as gens sanz letreure; Ne sai que translation vaille Qui semble as oyans devinaille, Dont l’en oze et puet la verite Demostrer par auctorite. Beau mest ce a tot puet plaizir, Se non moy l’estovera soffrir. (ll. 41–48)

(Because the letter is obscure, too closed for people without Latin learning. I do not know what a translation is worth when it comes across to its listeners as a riddle, whose truth one can neither dare nor manage to display through citing authorities. I like something that everyone can find pleasing, or at least endurable.) The verse prologue depicts prose translation as a quest, struggling with the obscurities of the Latin verses and resisting the seduction of poetic devices such as extrapolation or ornament. Bertin and Foulet praised ‘a text with a certain charm because of the independence and proud loquacity of the original unknown twelfth century translator’.67 This translator did not impress subsequent copyists. D’Albon’s archaic synoptic edition of 1913 allows the reader to track the gradual changes in the five copies, for example in the variants in the short scene where Delilah shaves Samson’s hair: At illa dormire eum fecit super genua sua, et in sinu sua reclinare caput; vocavitque tonsorem, et rasie septem crines ejus, et coepit abigere eum, et a se repellere, statim enim ab eo fortitudo discessit. Dixitque: Philisthiim super te, Samson! (Judges 16:19–20)68

The closest modern translation to the Vulgate text is the Douay-Rheims Bible:

1 INTERPRETATIONS 

13

But she made him sleep upon her knees, and lay his head in her bosom. And she called a barber, and shaved his seven locks, and began to drive him away, and thrust him from her: for immediately his strength departed from him. (Douay-Rheims) Despite its claims to the contrary, the translation is not faithful to its source: Samson does not merely lay his head on Delilah’s breast, but he falls soundly asleep on it. Delilah does not call for a barber. Instead, she wields the shears herself on his hair (not on seven braids). She then thrusts Samson some distance away from her body, because he has lost his strength. Donc fist Dalida Sanson couchier sor ces escos, et dormi sur sa poitrine, puis a pris I rasor, si li rest li cheveaus, en quoy sa force estoit. Quant ce fu fait, si le geta fors de son escos et bien loins le bouta de sei, car tote sa force fu ja defallie et puis si li a dit: Sanson, Phelistiens sont ja sur vos. (Paris BNF NAF 1404)

(So Delilah made him lie down on her lap, and he slept on her breast, then she took one razor, she shaved off his hair, in which lay his strength. When that was done, she threw him out of her lap and pushed him a long way away from her (for his strength had completely left him), and then she said to him, “Samson, the Philistines are now upon you!”) Another copy of the Prose Book of Judges retains the barber, but not the other omitted elements: Dont fist Dalida Sanson couchier et dormir sur sa faude et apela I tondeor qui lui rest li cheviaus esquels sa force estoit. Quant ce fu fait, si le geta fors de son escouz, et bien loing de lui l’a boute, car toute sa force lui fu ja defaillie et puis si li a dit: Sanson Philistiins sunt ja sur vos. (Paris, Bibl. de l’Arsenal 5211)

(Then Delilah made Samson lie down and sleep on her skirt, and she called for a barber who shaved off the hair in which lay his strength. When that was done, she pushed him out of her lap, and she threw him a long way away from her, because he had already lost all his strength, and then she said to him, “Samson, the Philistines are now upon you!”) A further copyist introduces some embellishments to the scene and restores the seven locks from the Vulgate:

14 

C. LÉGLU

Dont fist Dallida Sanson coucier sor son escourc et dormir et prist son chief, si l’enclina sor son pis, et puis a un raeoir apele, si li rest tous li VII lius del chef, u la force soloit estre. Et tantost com ot ce fait, sel jeta fors de son escourc et bien loing l’a de li boute, car toute sa force estoit ja de lui seuree, puis li dist par grant felonie: Sanson li Philistien sont ja sor vous. (Paris BNF fr. 6447)

(Then Delilah made Samson lie down upon her lap and sleep, and she took his head, she bent it upon her breast, and she called for a razor, she sheared off all the seven locks of his head, where his strength had been. As soon as she had done that, she threw him out of her lap and she pushed him a long way away from her, because his strength had completely left him now, and she said to him with great wickedness: “Samson, the Philistines are now upon you!”) Delilah is now fully committed to Samson’s downfall. She moves Samson’s head onto her body all the better to shave it, and she injects her words with grant felonie. These subtle additions transform the power play and the characterisation. It is very likely that the translator was influenced by both the commentary tradition and by visual culture (as Chapter 2 will go on to show). Osbern’s commentary tradition identified Delilah’s manipulation of Samson’s body as carnality binding the body of the sinner. Here, Samson’s body becomes a puppet in the hands of the embodiment of sin. Finally, an Occitan version of the late fourteenth-century grants Delilah almost superhuman power, for she arranges his body posture, puts him to sleep and she even seems to have a razor to hand: Adoncs fes Dalida Samson colquar sobre sa fauda e adormit se sobre son piets, pueys a pres I razor si li va rayre los cabelhs en losquals sa forsa era. Quant ayso fon fach, si lo gitet fora de son e ben luenh de si l’empeys, car tota sa forsa li fon ja deffalhida, e pueys si li dis: Samson, Felestians son ja sobre vos. (Paris BNF fr. 2426)

(Then Delilah made Samson lie down upon her skirt, and made him go to sleep upon her breast, then she took a razor, and she sheared off the hair in which lay his strength. When that was done, she threw him out of her … and pushed him a long way away from her, for his strength

1 INTERPRETATIONS 

15

had failed him completely now, and then she said to him, “Samson, the Philistines are now upon you!”) The Occitan scribe’s linguistic, temporal and probably cultural adaptation of the Anglo-Norman original turns Delilah into a powerful protagonist. She is, however, emphatically human. Despite their variations, none of these versions cites exegetical commentaries such as Osbern’s. There are no typological or allegorical glosses, the barber is never associated with the devil, and Delilah remains a woman rather than a personification. Delilah is the only named woman in Judges 13–16, unmarried and with no lineage, dispassionate in her betrayal of Samson (she is not a Philistine).69 Possibly as consequence of her dominance in the narrative, many visual depictions of this scene omit the barber, and Delilah shears Samson’s hair with her own hands. Such visual translations simplify the positioning of the pair, for he lies in her lap as she shaves him. In this tradition, Delilah strips Samson of his hair and his strength as well as his secret. It seems therefore that a non-exegetical, narrative tradition has influenced the translation’s copyists. The prologue of the Prose Judges proposed a qualitative difference between deceitful verse and faithful prose. It did so while acknowledging that the Vulgate is a riddling poem that requires distortions if its audience is to understand the sense. Comparing several copies reveals how different scribes sought to embellish their prose text, abandoning fidelity in favour of artistic and dramatic licence. This prose translation’s subtle play with its source also shows that typology was not the dominant interpretative tool for translators of the Old Testament. The rest of this book will pursue the enquiry into the subtle and unsubtle variants that were played on that Vulgate text. Chapter 2 examines the visual traditions that transmitted the story of Samson into the religious and domestic environment of these translators and their audiences. Chapter 3 will address the aural dimension of poetry and music, returning to the discussion of the subjective dimension of verse. Chapter four moves on to the fourteenth century and analyses the divergences and infidelities of prose translations and visual renderings of the Samson story. These divergent adaptations of Judges 13–16 display subjective, aesthetic developments on a tale that was both familiar and elusive.

16 

C. LÉGLU



Notes 1. Eyal Poleg, Approaching the Medieval Bible in Medieval England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013), 1–6, 14–49. 2.  Frans Van Liere, The Medieval Bible: An Introduction (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 210. 3. Poleg, Approaching, 66–76, 109. Margaret Hoogvliet, “‘Pour faire laies personnes entendre les hystoires des escriptures anciennes’: Theoretical Approaches to a Social History of Religious Reading in the French Vernaculars During the Late Middle Ages”, in Cultures of Religious Reading in the Late Middle Ages: Instructing the Soul, Feeding the Spirit, and Awakening the Passion, ed. S. Corbellini (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 247–274. 4. George Zarnecki, Later English Romanesque Sculpture, 1140–1210 (London: Tiranti, 1953), 12–15; Malcolm Thurlby, The Herefordshire School of Romanesque Sculpture, with a History of the Anarchy by Bruce Coplestone-Crow (Little Logaston: Logaston Press, 1999). Catherine Léglu, “Samson Project Cluster”: https://www.google.com/maps/ d/u/0/edit?mid=1X7uEd7aD8Jzz2l3DMEzfUhACIsc&ll=51.8915654 11175975%2C-2.2995267279981135&z=8. 5. Martine de Rougemont, “Bible et théâtre”, in Le Siècle des Lumières et la Bible, ed. Yvon Belaval and Dominique Bourel (Paris: Beauchesne, 1986), 275. 6. Gérard Gengembre, “De Vigny à Balzac, Samson entre exaltation romantique et dérision”, Graphè, 13, Samson et Dalila (2004): 163–173; Alfred de Vigny, “La Colère de Samson”, La Revue des deux mondes, January 1864 (deuxième quinzaine): 493–496. 7. Ralph P. Locke, “Constructing the Oriental ‘Other’: Saint-Saëns’s Samson et Dalila”, Cambridge Opera Journal, 3 (1991): 289–298; Patrick Barbier, “Samson et Dalila de Saint-Saëns, de l’oratorio à l’opéra”, Graphè, 13, Samson et Dalila (2004): 175–182. 8. Locke, “Constructing”, 297–298. 9.  “Delilah”, Lyrics by Barry Mason and Seymour Whittingham Mason, Music by Les Reed, Decca Records, 1968. Nadia Khomami, “Delilah? We Just Can’t Take Rugby Fans Singing It Any More, Says MP”, The Guardian, 5 February 2016. 10. Carol Ann Duffy, The World’s Wife (London: Picador, 1999), 28–29. 11. “Samson”, Lyric and Music by Regina Spektor, in Begin to Hope, Sire Records, 2006. 12. Steven Berkoff, One-Act Plays (London: Methuen Drama, 2012), x, 233–244. 13. Berkoff, One-Act Plays, x.

1 INTERPRETATIONS 

17

14. Jack M. Sasson, “Who Cut Samson’s Hair? (And Other Trifling Issues Raised by Judges 16)”, Prooftexts, 8.3 (1988): 333–339. 15.  Susan Niditch, “Epic and History in the Hebrew Bible: Definitions, ‘Ethnic Genres’ and the Challenges of Cultural Identity in the Biblical Book of Judges”, in Epic and History, ed. David Konstan and Kurt A. Raaflaub (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 86–102. On structure and the redactor, see Marc Brettler, “The Book of Judges: Literature as Politics”, Journal of Biblical Literature, 108.3 (1989): 395–418. 16. Brettler, “The Book of Judges”, quotation, 397. 17.  Brettler, “The Book of Judges”, 416. Niditch, “Epic and History”, 91–92. 18. Niditch, “Epic and History”, 96–98. 19. Mieke Bal, Murder and Difference: Gender, Genre, and Scholarship on Sisera’s Death, trans. Matthew Gumpert (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), 17–32. 20. J. Cheryl Exum, “The Many Faces of Samson”, in Samson: Hero or Fool? 13–32, and in the same volume; Elie Assis, “The Structure and Meaning of the Samson Narratives”, in Samson: Hero or Fool? 1–12. Susan Niditch, The Book of Judges: Commentary (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 138–171. 21.  Brettler, “The Book of Judges”, 403. Othniel Margalith, “Samson’s Foxes”, Vetus Testamentum, 35.2 (1985): 224–229; also by Margalith, “Samson’s Riddle and Samson’s Magic Locks”, Vetus Testamentum, 36.2 (1986): 225–234, “More Samson Legends”, Vetus Testamentum, 36.4 (1986): 397–405, and “The Legends of Samson/Heracles”, Vetus Testamentum, 37.1 (1987): 63–70. See the synthesis of these studies by Dany Nocquet, “De quelques intentions du cycle de Samson. Regards historico-critiques sur Jg 13–16”, Graphè, 13, Samson et Dalila (2004): 53–73. 22. Gregory Mobley, “The Wild Man in the Bible and the Ancient Near East”, Journal of Biblical Literature, 116.2 (1997): 217–233. Nocquet, “De quelques intentions”, 59–63. 23. Christophe Lemardelé, “Samson Le ‘Nazir’: Un mythe du jeune guerrier”, Revue de l’Histoire des Religions, 222.3 (2005): 259–286; “Samson est donc l’homme des marges et des écarts, dans tous les sens du terme”, 267. 24. Bal, Murder and Difference. See also Mieke Bal, “Delilah Decomposed: Samson’s Talking Cure and the Rhetoric of Subjectivity”, in Lethal Love: Feminist Literary Readings of Biblical Love Stories (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), 37–67. For a response to Bal’s Murder and Difference, see Danna Nolan Fewell and David M. Gunn, “Controlling

18 











C. LÉGLU

Perspectives: Women, Men, and the Authority of Violence in Judges 4 & 5”, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 58.3 (1990): 389–411. 25. Bal, Murder and Difference, 135. 26.  Greenstein, “The Riddle of Samson”; David M. Gunn, “Samson of Sorrows: An Isaianic Gloss on Judges 13–16”, in Reading Between Texts: Intertextuality and the Hebrew Bible, ed. Danna Nolan Fewell (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1992), 225–253; Elie Assis, “The Structure and Meaning of the Samson Narratives, Jud. 13–16”, in Samson, Hero or Fool? ed. Erik M. Eynikel and Tobias Nicklas (Leuven: Brill, 2014), 1–12, and in the same volume, J. Cheryl Exum, “The Many Faces of Samson”, 13–31. Eyal Rozmarin, “Samson Now, an Introduction”, Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 12.2 (2011): 79–88. 27. D. Luciani, “Samson: l’Amour rend aveugle”, Vetus Testamentum, 59.2 (2009): 323–326. 28. Edward L. Greenstein, “The Riddle of Samson”, Prooftexts, 1.3 (1981): 237–260; Margalith, “Samson’s Riddle”, 225–229. 29.  Gunn, “Samson of Sorrows”, 225–227; J. Cheryl Exum, “The Theological Dimension of the Samson Saga”, Vetus Testamentum, 33 (1983): 30–45. 30. Gunn, “Samson of Sorrows”, 227. 31. Gunn, “Samson of Sorrows”, 239–240; David Grossman, Lion’s Honey: The Myth of Samson, trans. S. Schoffman (New York, NY: Canongate, 2006). 32. Gunn, “Samson of Sorrows”, 250. 33. Niditch, “Epic and History”, 96–99. 34. Pnina Galpaz-Feller, Samson: The Hero and the Man: The Story of Samson (Judges 13–16) (New York, NY and Oxford, UK: Peter Lang, 2006), 280. 35. Eyal Rozmarin, “Samson Now, an Introduction”, Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 12.2 (2011): 79–88. Sam Gerson, “The Myth of Samson: Omnipotence, Alienation and Destructive Narcissism”, Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 12.2 (2011): 89–96. 36. See Gerson, “The Myth of Samson”, and Udi Aloni, “Samson the NonEuropean”, Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 12.2 (2011): 124–133. See also Lemardelé, “Samson Le “Nazir”. Ilan Kutz, “Samson’s Complex: The Compulsion to Re-Enact Betrayal and Rage”, British Journal of Medical Psychology, 62 (1989): 123–134; Eyal Rozmarin, “Little Samsons”, Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 16.4 (2015): 285–289. Miri Rozmarin, “Living Values: Maternal Corporal Subjectivity and the Value of Life and Death”, Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 12.2 (2011): 108–123.

1 INTERPRETATIONS 

19

37.  Greti Dinkova-Bruun, “Biblical Thematics: The Story of Samson in Medieval Literary Discourse”, in The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Latin Literature, ed. Ralph Haexter and David Townsend (Oxford Handbooks Online, 2012), http://www.oxfordhandbooks.com. See also Gilbert Dahan, “Samson et Dalila: le chapitre 16 des Juges dans l’exégèse chrétienne des XIIe et XIIIe siècles”, Graphè, 13 (2004): Samson et Dalila, 97–118, and in the same issue, Hervé Savon, “Samson dans l’œuvre d’Ambroise de Milan”, 75–95. 38.  Morbley, “The Wild Man”, 230, citing “Alexander Scheiber, Samson Uprooting a Tree”, Jewish Quarterly Review, 50 (1959–1960): 176– 180; and Scheiber, “Further Parallels to the Figure of Samson the TreeUprooter”, Jewish Quarterly Review, 52 (1961–1962): 35–40. 39. Sara Offenberg, “Mirroring Samson the Martyr: Reflections of JewishChristian Relations in the North French Hebrew Illuminated Miscellany”, in Jews and Christians in Thirteenth-Century France, ed. Elisheva Baumgarten and Judah D. Galinsky (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), Chapter 13. Andrew Rippin, “The Muslim Samson: Medieval, Modern and Scholarly Interpretations”, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 71.2 (2008): 239–253. 40.  “Samson significat Christum. Per angelum annunciata est nativitas Samsonis, et per angelum annunciata est nativitas Salvatoris. Samson leonem interfecit, et Christus diabolum occidit. Samson de faucibus leonis extrahit favum, et Christus de faucibus diaboli genus humanum: cera corpus, mel spiritus”, Richard de Saint-Victor, Liber exceptionum: Texte critique avec introduction, notes et table, ed. Jean Châtillon (Paris: Vrin, 1958), Part 2, Book 4, Chapter 10, 278. 41. “Secundum sensum tropologicum, significat Samson quemlibet fidelem in fide fortem, qui leonem interficit, dum diabolum vincit. Favum extrahit, dum vel se vel alium de suggestionibus diaboli eruit”, Richard de SaintVictor, Liber exceptionum, ed. Châtillon, 279. Greti Dinkova-Bruun, “Autor, Authorship and the Literal Sense of the Bible: The Case of Leonius of Paris”, in Bibel und Exegese in der Abtei Sankt Viktor zu Paris. Form und Funktion eines Grundtextes im europäischen Raum, ed. Rainer Berndt (Münster: Aschendorff, 2009), 266–270, and also by DinkovaBruun, “The Verse Bible as aide-mémoire”, in The Making of Memory in the Middle Ages, ed. Lucie Doležová (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2010), 124–130. 42. Kutz, “Samson’s Complex”, 124. 43. Valérie Fasseur, “Introduction”, in Valérie Fasseur and Jean-René Valette, Les Écoles de pensée du XIIe siècle et la littérature romane (oc et oïl) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016), 9–13. In the same volume, Cédric Giraud, “Faire école au XIIe siècle: quelques réflexions générales”, 99–110.

20 













C. LÉGLU

44. Beryl Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952); Philippe Buc, L’Ambiguïté du livre: Princes, pouvoir, et peuple dans les commentaires de la Bible au Moyen Age (Paris: Beauchesne, 1994), 37–40, 59–60. 45. Eva de Visscher, Reading the Rabbis: Christian Hebraism in the Works of Herbert of Bosham (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2014), 12–16; Deborah L. Goodwin, “Nothing in Our Histories: A Postcolonial Perspective on Twelfth-Century Christian Hebraism”, Medieval Encounters, 15.1 (2009): 35–65. 46.  Shlomo Sela and Gad Freudenthal, “Abraham Ibn Ezra’s Scholarly Writings: A Chronological Listing”, Aleph, 6 (2006): 13–55. Tamás Visi, “Berechiah Ben Naṭronai Ha-Naqdan’s Dodi Ve-Neḵdi and the Transfer of Scientific Knowledge from Latin to Hebrew in the Twelfth Century”, Aleph, 14.2 (2014): 28. 47.  Kirsten A. Fudeman, “These Things I Will Remember: The Troyes Martyrdom and Collective Memory”, Prooftexts, 29.1 (2009): 6, 21–22. 48. Visi, “Berechiah Ben Naṭronai”, 36, 45 n. 78, 46–49. 49. Visi, “Berechiah Ben Naṭronai”, 48–49. 50. Paul Saenger, “The Twelfth-Century Reception of Oriental Languages and the Graphic Mise-En-Page of Latin Vulgate Bibles Copied in England”, in Form and Function in the Late Medieval Bible, ed. Eyal Poleg and Laura Light (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 53–54. 51. Extracts from his commentaries appear in British Library MS Royal 8 A XXI (also from Gloucester). 52. Richard William Hunt, “The ‘Lost’ Preface to the Liber Derivationum of Osbern of Gloucester”, in Richard William Hunt, The Teaching of Grammar in the Middle Ages: Collected Papers, ed. G. L. Bursill-Hall (Amsterdam: John Benjamins SV, 1980), 151–166. 53. Hunt, “The ‘Lost’ Preface”, 161. 54. Margalith, “Samson’s Foxes”. 55. For similar examples, see Poleg, Approaching, 175–178. 56. Thurlby, The “Herefordshire School”, 56–57, 106–107. Thurlby cites Oxford Bodleian Library MS Laud. Misc. 247 (England, c. 1110–1130), see f.147v (Onocentaur); William J. Travis, “Of Sirens and Onocentaurs: A Romanesque Apocalypse at Montceaux-l’Etoile”, Artibus et Historiae 23.45 (2002): 32–35, 39. 57. Joe Hillaby, “Testimony from the Margin: The Gloucester Jewry and Its Neighbours, c. 1159–1290”, Jewish Historical Studies, 37 (2001): 42–44.

1 INTERPRETATIONS 











21

58. Sara Lipton, Images of Intolerance: The Representation of Jews and Judaism in the ‘Bible moralisée’ (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999); Laura H. Hollengreen, “The Politics and Poetics of Possession: Saint Louis, the Jews, and Old Testament Violence”, in Between the Picture and the Word: Essays in Commemoration of John Plummer, ed. Colum Hourihane (University Park, PA: Index of Christian Art, Princeton University, Penn State University Press, 2005), 51–71. 59. Pierre Nobel, “Les Hébreux au péril des Cananéens et d’eux-mêmes dans le Poème anglo-normand sur l’Ancien Testament”, in “La Chrétienté au peril sarrasin”, Senefiance, 46 (2000): 183–202. 60. Hollengreen, “The Politics and Poetics”, 54–55, quotation, 55. 61. Goodwin, “Nothing in Our Histories”, 46–47. 62. Hollengreen, “The Politics and Poetics”, 58. 63. Daniel Weiss, “Portraying the Past, Illuminating the Present: The Art of the Morgan Library Picture Bible”, in The Book of Kings: Art, War, and the Morgan Library’s Medieval Picture Bible, ed. William Noel and Daniel Weiss (Baltimore: The Walters Art Museum in Association with Third Millennium, 2002), 27. 64.  Marquis [André] d’Albon, Le Livre des Juges: les cinq textes de la version française faite au XIIe siècle pour les chevaliers du Temple (Lyon: Imprimerie d’Alexandre Rey, 1913), 49–60. Gerald A. Bertin and Alfred Foulet, “The Book of Judges in Old French Prose: The Gardner A. Sage Library Fragment”, Romania, 90 (1969): 121–131. La Bible d’Acre: genèse et exode, ed. Pierre Nobel (Université de Franche-Comté: Presses universitaires de Franche-Comté, 2006), xxxii–xxxiii. Ian Short, “Patrons and Polyglots: French Literature in Twelfth-Century England”, AngloNorman Studies XIV, Proceedings of the Battle Conference, ed. Marjorie Chibnall (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1992), 229–249. 65. D’Albon, iii. 66. BNF NAF 1404 text, ed. d’Albon, 2 bis. 67. Bertin and Foulet, “The Book of Judges”, 128. 68.  Biblia Sacra iuxta vulgatam versionem, 4th ed. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1994). 69. Libby Karlinger Escobedo, “Heroines, Wives, and Mothers: Depicting Women in the Bible Historiale and the Morgan Picture Bible”, in Between the Picture and the Word: Essays in Commemoration of John Plummer, ed. Colum Hourihane (University Park, Pennsylvania: Index of Christian Art, Princeton University, Penn State University Press, 2005), 107–108. Sasson, “Who Cut Samson’s Hair?”, 333–339.

22 

C. LÉGLU

Bibliography Aloni, Udi. “Samson the Non-European”, Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 12.2 (2011): 124–133. Assis, Elie. “The Structure and Meaning of the Samson Narratives, Jud. 13–16”, in Samson, Hero or Fool? ed. Erik M. Eynikel and Tobias Nicklas, 1–12. Leuven: Brill, 2014. Aylmer, G. E., and John Eric Tiller, Hereford Cathedral: A History. London and Rio Grande: Hambledon Press, 2000. Bal, Mieke. “Delilah Decomposed: Samson’s Talking Cure and the Rhetoric of Subjectivity”, in Lethal Love: Feminist Literary Readings of Biblical Love Stories, 37–67. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987. ———. Murder and Difference: Gender, Genre, and Scholarship on Sisera’s Death, trans. Matthew Gumpert. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992. Barbier, Patrick. “Samson et Dalila de Saint-Saëns, de l’oratorio à l’opéra”, Graphè, 13, Samson et Dalila (2004): 175–182. Berkoff, Steven. One-Act Plays. London: Methuen Drama, 2012. Bertin, Gerald A., and Alfred Foulet, “The Book of Judges in Old French Prose: The Gardner A. Sage Library Fragment”, Romania, 90 (1969): 121–131. Biblia Sacra iuxta vulgatam versionem, ed. R. Weber and R. Gryson, 4th ed. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1994. Brettler, Marc. “The Book of Judges: Literature as Politics”, Journal of Biblical Literature, 108.3 (1989): 395–418. Buc, Philippe. L’Ambiguïté du livre: Princes, pouvoir, et peuple dans les commentaires de la Bible au Moyen Age. Paris: Beauchesne, 1994. Dahan, Gilbert. “Samson et Dalila: le chapitre 16 des Juges dans l’exégèse chrétienne des XIIe et XIIIe siècles”, Graphè, 13, Samson et Dalila (2004): 97–118. D’Albon, André, Marquis. Le Livre des Juges: les cinq textes de la version française faite au XIIe siècle pour les chevaliers du Temple. Lyon: Imprimerie d’Alexandre Rey, 1913. De Rougemont, Martine. “Bible et théâtre”, in Le Siècle des Lumières et la Bible, ed. Yvon Belaval and Dominique Bourel. Paris: Beauchesne, 1986, 269–287. de Saint-Victor, Richard. Liber Exceptionum: Texte Critique Avec Introduction, Notes et Table, ed. Jean Châtillon. Paris: Vrin, 1958. De Vigny, Alfred. “La Colère de Samson”, La Revue des deux mondes, January 1864 (deuxième quinzaine): 493–496. De Visscher, Eva. Reading the Rabbis: Christian Hebraism in the Works of Herbert of Bosham. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2014. “Delilah.” Lyrics by Barry Mason and Seymour Whittingham Mason, Music by Les Reed, Decca Records, 1968. Dinkova-Bruun, Greti. “Autor, Authorship and the Literal Sense of the Bible: The Case of Leonius of Paris”, in Bibel und Exegese in der Abtei Sankt Viktor

1 INTERPRETATIONS 

23

zu Paris. Form und Funktion eines Grundtextes im europäischen Raum, ed. Rainer Berndt, 259–277. Münster: Aschendorff, 2009. ———. “The Verse Bible as aide-mémoire”, in The Making of Memory in the Middle Ages, ed. Lucie Doležová, 115–136. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2010. ———. “Biblical Thematics: The Story of Samson in Medieval Literary Discourse”, in The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Latin Literature, ed. Ralph Haexter and David Townsend, Oxford Handbooks Online, 2012, No Pagination: http://www.oxfordhandbooks.com. Duffy, Carol Ann. The World’s Wife. London: Picador, 1999. Escobedo, Libby Karlinger. “Heroines, Wives, and Mothers: Depicting Women in the Bible Historiale and the Morgan Picture Bible”, in Between the Picture and the Word: Essays in Commemoration of John Plummer, ed. Colum Hourihane, 100–111. University Park, PA: Index of Christian Art, Princeton University, Penn State University Press, 2005. Exum, J. Cheryl. “The Theological Dimension of the Samson Saga”, Vetus Testamentum, 33 (1983): 30–45. ———. “The Many Faces of Samson”, in Samson, Hero or Fool? ed. Erik M. Eynikel and Tobias Nicklas, 13–31. Leuven: Brill, 2014. Fasseur, Valérie, and Jean-René Valette. Les Écoles de pensée du XIIe siècle et la littérature romane (oc et oïl). Turnhout: Brepols, 2016. Fudeman, Kirsten A. “These Things I Will Remember: The Troyes Martyrdom and Collective Memory”, Prooftexts, 29.1 (2009): 6, 21–22. Galpaz-Feller, Pnina. Samson: The Hero and the Man: The Story of Samson (Judges 13–16). New York, NY and Oxford, UK: Peter Lang, 2006. Gengembre, Gérard. “De Vigny à Balzac, Samson entre exaltation romantique et dérision”, Graphè, 13, Samson et Dalila (2004): 163–173. Gerson, Sam. “The Myth of Samson: Omnipotence, Alienation and Destructive Narcissism”, Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 12.2 (2011): 89–96. Giraud, Cédric. “Faire école au XIIe siècle: quelques réflexions générales”, in Les Écoles de pensée du XIIe siècle et la littérature romane (oc et oïl), ed. Valérie Fasseur and Jean-René Valette, 99–110. Turnhout: Brepols, 2016. Goodwin, Deborah L. “‘Nothing in Our Histories’: A Postcolonial Perspective on Twelfth-Century Christian Hebraism”, Medieval Encounters, 15.1 (2009): 35–65. Greenstein, Edward L. “The Riddle of Samson”, Prooftexts, 1.3 (1981): 237–260. Grossman, David. Lion’s Honey: The Myth of Samson, trans. S. Schoffman. New York, NY: Canongate, 2006. Gunn, David M. “Samson of Sorrows: An Isaianic Gloss on Judges 13–16”, in Reading Between Texts: Intertextuality and the Hebrew Bible, ed. Danna Nolan Fewell, 225–253. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1992.

24 

C. LÉGLU

Hillaby, Joe. “Testimony from the Margin: The Gloucester Jewry and Its Neighbours, c. 1159–1290”, Jewish Historical Studies, 37 (2001): 41–112. Hollengreen, Laura H. “The Politics and Poetics of Possession: Saint Louis, the Jews, and Old Testament Violence”, in Between the Picture and the Word: Essays in Commemoration of John Plummer, ed. Colum Hourihane, 51–71. University Park, PA: Index of Christian Art, Princeton University, Penn State University Press, 2005. Hoogvliet, Margaret. “‘Pour faire laies personnes entendre les hystoires des escriptures anciennes’: Theoretical Approaches to a Social History of Religious Reading in the French Vernaculars During the Late Middle Ages”, in Cultures of Religious Reading in the Late Middle Ages: Instructing the Soul, Feeding the Spirit, and Awakening the Passion, ed. S. Corbellini, 247–274. Turnhout: Brepols, 2013. Hunt, Richard William. “The “Lost” Preface to the Liber Derivationum of Osbern of Gloucester”, in Richard William Hunt, The Teaching of Grammar in the Middle Ages: Collected Papers, ed. G. L. Bursill-Hall, 151–166. ‎Amsterdam: John Benjamins SV, 1980. Khomami, Nadia. “Delilah? We Just Can’t Take Rugby Fans Singing It Any More, Says MP”, The Guardian, 5 February 2016: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/feb/05/delilah-rugby-fans-singing-mp-sixnations-ban-song. Kutz, Ilan. “Samson’s Complex: The Compulsion to Re-Enact Betrayal and Rage”, British Journal of Medical Psychology, 62 (1989): 123–134. La Bible d’Acre: Genèse et Exode, ed. Pierre Nobel. Université de Franche-Comté: Presses universitaires de Franche-Comté, 2006. Léglu, Catherine. “Samson Project Cluster”, Google Maps: https:// www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?mid= 1X7uEd7aD8Jzz2l3DMEzfUhACIsc&ll=51.891565411175975%2C-2.299526727998113 5&z=8. Lemardelé, Christophe. “Samson Le ‘Nazir’: Un Mythe du jeune guerrier.” Revue De l’Histoire Des Religions, 222.3 (2005): 259–286. Lipton, Sara. Images of Intolerance: The Representation of Jews and Judaism in the “Bible moralisée”. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. Locke, Ralph P. “Constructing the Oriental ‘Other’: Saint-Saëns’s Samson et Dalila”, Cambridge Opera Journal, 3 (1991): 261–302. Luciani, D. “Samson: l’Amour rend aveugle”, Vetus Testamentum, 59.2 (2009): 323–326. Margalith, Othniel. “Samson’s Foxes.” Vetus Testamentum, 35.2 (1985): 224–229. ———. “More Samson Legends.” Vetus Testamentum, 36.4 (1986): 397–405. ———. “Samson’s Riddle and Samson’s Magic Locks”, Vetus Testamentum, 36.2 (1986): 225–234.

1 INTERPRETATIONS 

25

———. “The Legends of Samson/Heracles”, Vetus Testamentum, 37.1 (1987): 63–70. Mobley, Gregory. “The Wild Man in the Bible and the Ancient Near East”, Journal of Biblical Literature, 116.2 (1997): 217–233. Niditch, Susan. “Samson as Culture Hero, Trickster, and Bandit: The Empowerment of the Weak”, Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 52 (1990): 608–624. ———. The Book of Judges: Commentary. Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008. ———. “Epic and History in the Hebrew Bible: Definitions, ‘Ethnic Genres’ and the Challenges of Cultural Identity in the Biblical Book of Judges”, in Epic and History, ed. David Konstan and Kurt A. Raaflaub, 86–102. Chichester and Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. Nobel, Pierre. “Les Hébreux au péril des Cananéens et d’eux-mêmes dans le Poème anglo-normand sur l’Ancien Testament, in ‘La Chrétienté au peril sarrasin’”. Senefiance, 46 (2000): 183–202. Nocquet, Dany. “De quelques intentions du cycle de Samson. Regards historico-critiques sur Jg 13–16”, Graphè, 13, Samson et Dalila (2004): 53–73. Nolan Fewell, Danna, and David M. Gunn. “Controlling Perspectives: Women, Men, and the Authority of Violence in Judges 4 & 5”, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 58.3 (1990): 389–411. Offenberg, Sara. “Mirroring Samson the Martyr: Reflections of Jewish-Christian Relations in the North French Hebrew Illuminated Miscellany”, in Jews and Christians in Thirteenth-Century France, ed. Elisheva Baumgarten and Judah D. Galinsky. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Poleg, Eyal. Approaching the Medieval Bible in Medieval England. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013. Rippin, Andrew. “The Muslim Samson: Medieval, Modern and Scholarly Interpretations”, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 71.2 (2008): 239–253. Rozmarin, Eyal. “Samson Now, an Introduction”, Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 12.2 (2011): 79–88. ———. “Little Samsons”, Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 16.4 (2015): 285–289. Rozmarin, Miri. “Living Values: Maternal Corporal Subjectivity and the Value of Life and Death”, Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 12.2 (2011): 108–123. Saenger, Paul. “The Twelfth-Century Reception of Oriental Languages and the Graphic Mise-En-Page of Latin Vulgate Bibles Copied in England”, in Form and Function in the Late Medieval Bible, ed. Eyal Poleg and Laura Light, 31–66. Leiden: Brill, 2013. “Samson”, Lyric and Music by Regina Spektor, in Songs, Self-Released, No Label, 2002, and Begin to Hope, Sire Records, 2006.

26 

C. LÉGLU

Sasson, Jack M. “Who Cut Samson’s Hair? (And Other Trifling Issues Raised by Judges 16)”, Prooftexts, 8.3 (1988): 333–339. Savon, Hervé. “Samson dans l’œuvre d’Ambroise de Milan”, Graphè, 13, Samson et Dalila (2004): 75–95. Scheiber, Alexander. “Samson Uprooting a Tree”, Jewish Quarterly Review, 50 (1959–1960): 176–180. ———. “Further Parallels to the Figure of Samson the Tree-Uprooter”, Jewish Quarterly Review, 52 (1961–1962): 35–40. Sela, Shlomo, and Gad Freudenthal. “Abraham Ibn Ezra’s Scholarly Writings: A Chronological Listing.” Aleph, 6 (2006): 13–55. Short, Ian. “Patrons and Polyglots: French Literature in Twelfth-Century England”, in Anglo-Norman Studies XIV, Proceedings of the Battle Conference, ed. Marjorie Chibnall, 229–249. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1992. Smalley, Beryl. The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952. Thurlby, Malcolm. The Herefordshire School of Romanesque Sculpture, with a History of the Anarchy by Bruce Coplestone-Crow. Little Logaston: Logaston Press, 1999. Travis, William J. “Of Sirens and Onocentaurs: A Romanesque Apocalypse at Montceaux-l’Etoile.” Artibus Et Historiae 23.45 (2002): 29–62. Van Liere, Frans. The Medieval Bible: An Introduction. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Visi, Tamás. “Berechiah Ben Naṭronai Ha-Naqdan’s Dodi Ve-Neḵdi and the Transfer of Scientific Knowledge from Latin to Hebrew in the Twelfth Century.” Aleph, 14.2 (2014): 9–73. Weiss, Daniel. “Portraying the Past, Illuminating the Present: The Art of the Morgan Library Picture Bible”, in The Book of Kings: Art, War, and the Morgan Library’s Medieval Picture Bible, ed. William Noel and Daniel Weiss, 11–35. Baltimore: The Walters Art Museum, in Association with Third Milennium, 2002. Zarnecki, George. Later English Romanesque Sculpture, 1140–1210. London: Tiranti, 1953.

CHAPTER 2

Visual Culture

Abstract  This chapter traces the reception and transformations of the Samson story in material culture. It looks at sculptures and mosaic pavements in religious buildings and board-game pieces from secular contexts. The chapter an exploration of Thurlby’s association of the ‘Herefordshire School’ of sculpture with the intellectual culture of these regions, notably the influence of the Victorine order. Keywords  Sculpture · Board games Adaptation · Epigraphy

· Romanesque art · Reception

It is striking that Delilah does not shear Samson’s hair in the Vulgate, but that she does in vernacular translations of it as well as in some exegetical texts. Visual culture changed the Bible by introducing permutations on written narratives and by adding written inscriptions designed to explain or to comment on the images. This chapter develops the idea that visual culture goes hand in glove with the sharing and reinvention of stories. In two parts, it first explores images of the lion-killer when he is identified as Samson (Judges 14:5–6), and then moves back to Samson as the victim of Delilah. The examples cited include rubrics and inscriptions, and these are studied as evidence of how images were decoded by different viewing communities. Visual culture accommodates multiple levels of interpretation because every viewer must act also as its narrator and must furnish information © The Author(s) 2018 C. Léglu, Samson and Delilah in Medieval Insular French, The New Middle Ages, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90638-6_2

27

28 

C. LÉGLU

concerning style, similarities to other designs or subjective reactions. Furthermore, the viewer encounters a visual artefact such as a sculpture within its material and geographical context, which creates dialogues with other narratives. In between the Latin Bible and visual representations lie unwritten glosses, implicit networks of association and sometimes written inscriptions that tend to present riddles rather than clarifications.1 A riddling use of inscriptions is in the mosaic pavement cycle of Samson in the Romanesque church of Saint Gereon in Cologne (Germany, possibly eleventh century). In this image, Delilah hands over the shears to two armed men. An inscription above the scene reads: ‘RECLIN. SINVDAL.A.TONS.CRINES.RADUNTUR’ (Reclinanti in sinu Dalilae a tonsoribus crines raduntur) (Reclining in Delilah’s lap, his hair is shorn off by barbers).2 The sleeping Samson has already lost his hair, thus implying for an observer who does not know the biblical text that it is she who cut off his seven locks. The image is not in line with the titulus: the two men in armour are clearly not barbers but soldiers. The image and the text have no obvious correspondence (why are soldiers taking the shears if the text mentions a barber?). Clemen interpreted the titulus via an allegorical gloss by Jacques de Vitry (c. 1160–1240): ‘Tunc a Dalida Sampsoni crines raduntur, cum per carnis voluptate anima virtutibus spoliatur’ (Then Samson’s hair was shorn by Delilah, just as the strength of the soul is robbed by the pleasures of the flesh).3 As was noted in the previous chapter, Delilah is defined in many commentaries as the sinful female flesh that robs masculine Samson of his strength and virtue: the strong man destroyed by his female nemesis. Yet in such images the fleshly, masculine barber and soldiers are equally important. Consulting an ecclesiastical gloss is both logical and sensible, but it seems to rob the image and titulus of a more subtle, creative dimension.

Lion-Killer The ‘Herefordshire School’ of Romanesque sculpture (d. c. 1135–1155) features several lion-killers.4 These vary from a large carving, possibly a tympanum, at Stretton Sugwas (Fig. 2.1), and smaller depictions at Iffley and Alveley.5 None are now in their original setting, but two may have been in set above a doorway in a programme that involved another large image of a saint or archangel killing a dragon.6 A lion-killer on a keystone Keynsham Abbey is linked to similar carvings in Malmesbury Abbey

2  VISUAL CULTURE 

29

Fig. 2.1  Tympanum depicting Samson and the lion. St Mary Magdalene’s Church, Stretton Sugwas, Herefordshire. Reproduced by permission of Historic England Archive

and at Glastonbury.7 The sculptors of the ‘Herefordshire school’ echo those of Poitou and Saintonge, sharing the iconography found in places such as Aulnay (see below).8 A man killing a lion by prising open its jaws as he rides astride its back is commonly identified as Samson killing the lion of Timnah (Judges 14:5–6).9 The first surviving example is from the catacombs of Rome.10 Given that the survival of medieval art tends to be exceptional, the frequency of lion-killing Samsons in many locations and contexts across Europe indicates that this was a familiar motif. Besides the mosaic cycle in Cologne, the so-called Samson monolith (Rhône valley) has Samson (named) killing the lion, then blind and led by a boy, next to the collapsing temple of Dagon.11 A small Samson cycle is carved on a capital of the cloister of Gerona cathedral (Catalonia), depicting him being sheared by Delilah and bringing down the temple.

30 

C. LÉGLU

A further narrative series at the abbey church of Nivelles (Belgium) depicts Samson at the centre of the image as lion-killer, then on the sides as the victim of Delilah and bringing down the temple of Dagon.12 These cycles highlight three key moments in the hero’s life: his mastery over the animal kingdom, his humiliating fall caused by his own desires and a death that can be viewed as both self-destruction and triumph. There is no explicit typology in these cycles, unlike the font in Simris (Sweden) that has a Samson cycle at the foot, literally supporting the life of Christ that is depicted around the bowl.13 The lion-killer is an Eastern Mediterranean motif that was disseminated through portable art such as silk cloths, imported by Syrian merchants into Europe in the early Middle Ages and used as hangings and coverings in religious as well as secular houses.14 The lion-killer can be seen in ‘man and lion’ motifs on candlesticks extant across Western Europe as well as a ship’s vane in Norway.15 In the 1180s, Saint Paul’s cathedral in London inventoried some candlesticks as ‘men riding on lions’. Many examples survive from central and north-eastern French regions, as do aquamaniles shaped like lion-killers, also derived from Islamic art.16 Samson killing the lion appears in Christian religious art in Western Europe from the late eleventh century and according to Offenberg in Jewish art only from around 1300.17 Some of these lion-riders or lion-killers evoke Hercules defeating the Nemean lion, and the two heroes were occasionally set in opposition to each other.18 The lion-killer appears in monastic and church contexts, such as an exterior tympanum at the Benedictine Abbeys of Andlau (Alsace) and Saint Pierre-de-Mauriac (Cantal).19 Well-known examples are on a capital in the abbey of Saint-Pierre at Moissac and on the exterior façade of the church of Saint Pierre at Parthenay-le-Vieux (Deux-Sèvres). An echo of the motif in the cycle in Cologne appears in a mosaic pavement in Layrac (Gers, France).20 The ‘Herefordshire School’ region has the advantage of including a written source for iconographic programmes. The treatise Pictor in Carmine applies typological rubrics to proposed images. It is possibly from Dore in Staffordshire; the only extant copy was in Hereford Cathedral, c. 1200. Like written exegesis, it pairs scenes from the Old Testament with the Gospels through sometimes arbitrary connections, but it associates Samson most with episodes in the life of Christ (the Annunciation, the Passion and the Harrowing of Hell). For example, Samson sleeping with the prostitute in Gaza prefigures dead Christ in the tomb. Christ’s Resurrection from the tomb is equated with Samson’s

2  VISUAL CULTURE 

31

discovery of honey comb in the lion’s mandible.21 Meanwhile, an illustrated copy of Anselm of Laon’s typological Liber similitudinibus also produced at Dore (and closely tied to the Pictor) provides Samson the lion-killer as an illustration of ‘strength’.22 It is likely therefore that the depictions of Samson as lion-killer in this region were decoded as both typology and allegory. In terms of typology, many lion-killers represent either David or Christ rather than Samson.23 David’s exploit was that of a shepherd protecting his father’s flock, so it represents safeguarding rather than mastery over the animal realm (1 Samuel 17: 34–37). In iconography, the motif is often confused with Samson, and the male figure is only identifiable as David by his attributes of a crown and a lamb or a goat.24 The speaker of the Book of Psalms (often identified with David in medieval devotion) asks for protection, ‘Libera me de ore leonis’ (Save me from the lion’s mouth) (Ps. 22: 20–21). The lion-killer is a protector against all predators: ‘Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder: the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet’ (Ps. 91: 13).25 In Christian liturgy, the plea to be saved from the mouth of the lion referred to the Passion as well as to the Offertory of the Mass for the Dead.26 The ‘lion’s mouth’ came to be applied indiscriminately to the jaws of Hell, to sin, Death and to heresy.27 In typology, Samson prises apart the jaws of the lion in prefiguration of Christ opening the gates (or mouth) of Hell to let out the souls. Samson carrying the gates of Gaza was also depicted as a prefiguration of the Resurrection or the Harrowing of Hell.28 As Christological prefiguration of the Harrowing of Hell, the lionkiller features in typological exegesis from Isidore of Seville up to the Historia Scholastica.29 The Victorines juxtaposed David, Samson and Christ in a sequence for Easter (text and translation by Fassler):30 Dauid fortis uiribus A leonis unguibus Et ab ursi faucibus Gregem patris liberat. Quod in morte plures strauit Sanson christum figurauit Cuius mors uictoria; Sanson dictus sol eorum Christus lux est electorum Quos illustrat gratia.

32 

C. LÉGLU

(David, with great strength, frees the flock of his father from the claws of the lion and the jaws of the bear. Since in death he laid many low, Samson prefigured Christ, whose death is victory; Samson is called their sun, Christ is the light of the elect, whom he illuminates by grace.) The Victorine hymn sets David and Samson’s lion-killing together only implicitly, because Samson’s victory is shifted from this exploit to his triumphant death. The poem uses the Jewish interpretation of Samson’s name (‘little sun’) to make the hero contribute to the ‘light’ of Christ. In this poem, the strong man is David, not Samson. Samson therefore connects the Old and the New Testaments. This liturgical sequence was probably not sung beyond Paris, and its sophisticated typological approach may not have been easily disseminated. The Pictor in Carmine says that Old Testament narratives require tituli because their content is less familiar to their viewers.31 An early thirteenth-century psalter from England assigns explanatory words to the Old Testament images alone.32 The next section addresses the question of how visual literacy interacted with the advanced knowledge of Latin that was required by written inscriptions. Relying on Latin inscriptions to elucidate puzzling images requires a modern viewer to overlook the fact that textual literacy and visual literacy were (and remain) variable.33 Caviness has proposed that medieval viewers of artworks perceived layered meanings in representations of biblical or other familiar cultural narratives. She suggests that those elements that are peripheral to an image or text participate in framing and defining either the viewer’s role or their response.34 Written inscriptions were used in much Romanesque art to identify figures or to comment on scenes. Much has been lost, as many tituli were eventually covered with paint, worn away or carved out. Latin inscriptions often served to identify figures and places in narrative images. It is unlikely that the laity, artisans and even monks were able to decipher such inscriptions. Moreover, some of them were never easy to read, as they were located too high above the viewer, situated in dark spaces, full of abbreviations, or scattered around the image.35 Yet sophisticated verses appear in several parts of Europe, on monuments and portable objects as well as in manuscripts.36 Stratford argues that the dissemination of verses between literate reading communities over a period of up to three hundred years points to a truly international dimension to medieval visual culture.37 According to Forsyth, the fragmented, jumbled inscriptions found in

2  VISUAL CULTURE 

33

elite literate communities such as the Benedictine priory of Moissac point to design, rather than to mistakes made by the sculptors. Most significant for the study of the Samson story is Forsyth’s suggestion that jumbled epigraphy could be a riddle.38 Tituli appeared in compilations by writers such as Hildebert of Le Mans (d. c. 1133), or in narrative texts such as the allegorising summary of the Bible by Peter Riga known as the Aurora (d. 1209).39 Before Riga, the Victorine canon Leonius of Paris devoted 515 verses to Samson in his biblical summary, the Historie ueteris testamenti.40 According to Dinkova-Bruun, Leonius offers a strictly historical treatment of Scripture.41 The Victorine approach of literal reading and interpretation historicised the Bible, but it also made it more approachable by narrowing the gap between letter and sense and therefore between reader and writer.42 Peter Comestor’s Historia Scholastica (c. 1160) was the most influential application of these new approaches.43 Yet the tituli that survive often carry messages that are not historicising. They also point to a mode of reading beyond mnemonics or simple labelling. A cycle of verses decorated a series of windows (now lost) in Canterbury cathedral. The Samson cycle appeared as a minor element, in a strictly typological role as one of the prefigurations of the Entombment as well as of the Resurrection. In this respect, he is placed in relation to David, as in the Victorine sequence cited above:44 Salvat ovem David; sic Christum significavit. Est Samson fortis qui rupit vincula mortis. Instar Samsonis, frangit Deus ossa leonis.

(David saved the sheep; that signified Christ. It is strong Samson who broke the chains of death. Like Samson, God broke the lion’s maw.) There is a touch of a riddle about the lion’s name being brought in at the close of the three lines. A possible coded use of inscriptions survives in a stained-glass Samson cycle in Auxerre cathedral. Eight of the sixteen surviving panels read ‘SENSVM FORTIN’ (strong sense/meaning). Either the artists who created these windows did not know the name of the biblical figure they were depicting, or the window is an allegorical interpretation of Samson as both strength and the senses.45 Is Samson named because he was an unfamiliar Old Testament figure? Or is he misnamed deliberately because this is a gloss, not a narrative support?

34 

C. LÉGLU

Accessible or inaccessible, hard or easy to decipher, an engraved or painted titulus is no more than a component of the visual design. It provides one element among many in a signifying cluster. It is not so much a key to the image as one of its features. Romanesque artworks were open to interpretation from their moment of creation: some sculptures received new inscriptions a few decades after their creation.46 The same applies to books: for example, French inscriptions were added to the image cycle of the Winchester Psalter up to two decades after its creation.47 The meanings ascribed to biblical imagery changed over time and increasingly reflected the Historia Scholastica, the Glossa ordinaria and the Aurora.48 Some inscriptions carry their learning lightly, in the sense that they gloss the image in order to explain it clearly.49 For example, at the church of Saint-Orens d’Auch (Gers), the lion-killer is glossed with a hexameter: ‘Virtus Sansonis sevi domat ora leonis’ (Samson’s manliness tames the fierce lion’s mouth).50 Other examples are riddles in stone, designed to provoke debate and new interpretative work. As was noted above, Delilah is often depicted shearing off Samson’s hair herself, in breach of both the Latin and the Hebrew texts.51 Delilah’s shears Samson with her own hands in the Samson cycle at La Sauve-Majeure (Gironde), the church of Gargilesse (Indre) and the church of SaintPierre-de-la-Tour in Aulnay-de-Saintonge (Charente-Maritime).52 At Aulnay, a woman uses a large pair of shears on the sleeping Samson, while another woman (possibly the same woman) binds his hands with ropes, or with his own locks of hair. Kendall’s version of the damaged inscription above this scene restores a leonine hexameter: ‘SANSONEM VINCIT CONIVNCS CRINEMQue  ’ (His wife binds Samson and cuts his hair), but the words also could say that he is bound with his own hair. The elements are clear enough (Samson, woman, hair, binding), but the syntax was garbled even before the inscription was damaged (the inscription on a similar image at nearby Verrinessous-Celles is now unreadable). Image combined with inscription makes Samson the victim of a wife (not mistress), who ties him up in the remnants of his broken Nazirite oath. He is bound by matrimony and bound by a woman, twice-over.53 Kendall suggests that the sculptor misinterpreted his source, but this is highly unlikely if the composition and (possibly) inscription were reproduced a day’s walk away at Verrinessous-Celles. It may well be a riddle on the lines suggested by Forsyth.54 The confusion of hair, ropes and protagonists indicates that the image was never transparent.

2  VISUAL CULTURE 

35

These riddles pay tribute to the complexities of the story that they illustrate. Samson’s wife breaks the riddle at the wedding, to disastrous effect (14: 15–19), and later, the male Philistines fail to bind him (15: 11–14). Only Delilah succeeds in both breaking his silence and binding him securely, although she has initially little success (16: 7–14). She thus defeats a Philistine wife and a group of Philistine men, working with them without being identified as a Philistine herself. She is, in fact, a figure that moves beyond nation, gender and number. Is it enough, then, to view these images as expressions of commonplace misogyny? Delilah is depicted without demonic or heretical features. It is simply a woman’s ingenuity cracking the riddle posed to her by the strongest man, armed only with a domestic pair of shears. The gaze of a viewer can take the narrative in many directions, away from misogyny and into more complex territory, one that challenges the domestic sphere of marriage and the home. Samson’s combats with lions and with Delilah also occurred in a secular, domestic context on gaming counters for draughts and tabula (tables, also known as taules).55 ‘Tables’ is a term now used for a number of games that were popular in medieval Europe and that were all played on a board that resembles the modern game of backgammon, called a tabularium or taulier, with a set of two or three dice. These were two sets of fifteen tablemen, on a board made of two sections separated by a bar (this was sometimes a hinged board). Like chess and draughts, tables confront two opposing teams, but it is a race rather than a battle.56 Many variations of the board game existed in Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean.57 For all their symbolism and their frequent use in allegory, boards and tablemen were disposable. Fragments have been found in refuse pits, moats and the bottom of a well at élite locations at SaintDenis, Blois, Fécamp, Château-Thierry, Tours, Gloucester and the Isle of Wight. In the aristocratic castle of Mayenne, the discovery of fifty tablemen and thirty-seven chess pieces along with broken raw materials such as antlers shows that gaming materials were sometimes produced within the court.58 One tableman from Cologne depicts a long-haired lion-killer surrounded by a Latin hexameter: ‘Sanson hunc fortem fortis viceratque leonem’ (Brave Samson overcomes this brave lion).59 Another lion-killer (without titulus) is on a piece dated to around 1120, from a complete set of tablemen that was excavated from the moat of Gloucester castle.60 The Cologne set is made from ivory, and the Gloucester set is of deer

36 

C. LÉGLU

bone. Both depict a human figure killing an animal, but by being an object of pleasure created from animal remains, they also offer an allusion to the honey comb that bees build in the lion’s jaw bone. There may even have been a direct allusion between the story and the object for anyone who had the opportunity to watch the production process (as at Mayenne), because a tableman made at Château-Thierry (Aisne) was drilled out of the mandible of a large mammal.61 Samson brings the honey that he finds in the lion’s mandible to his family, and they eat it without knowing its provenance (14: 9). The use of the skeleton of an animal to provide such pleasurable and binding luxuries for human social life as sweets and play becomes one of the interwoven narratives in these themed tablemen. This object embodies the riddle itself, as the Philistines reformulate it: ‘What is sweeter than honey? And what is stronger than a lion?’ (14: 18). When they speak these words, the Philistine men are under the impression that they have won the challenge. Samson’s violent reaction changes the terms of the competition and leads all the protagonists to disaster (14: 18). The object therefore symbolises a game that produces an unexpected outcome: suitable for a board game of challenges that played on probability. In her extensive work on them, Mann proposed that figurative, narrative tablemen came from a few centres, notably Cologne and Northern France or the Southern Low Countries.62 She was cautious about provenance, noting ‘the inherent portability of the tablemen, the personal nature of their use, and the manufacture of tablemen for export’.63 Widespread images of the Zodiac and beast fables contrast with less-accessible narratives such as the Trojan War. At least two surviving sets pitted the pagan Labours of Hercules against the biblical Samson.64 Her later research made a case for one ‘Samson vs. Hercules’ set as the product of a workshop active with Jewish patronage in the region of Cologne in the mid-twelfth century.65 The rules of a board game enabled discussion about the relative strengths of two narratives, and this implicit debate echoes such works as the poetic contest between biblical Truth (Alithia) and classical Falsehood (Pseutis) in Theodulus’s Eclogues.66 Romanesque art was fond of combat imagery pitting a human figure against natural or supernatural beasts or plants. Classical and biblical narratives, symbolic systems such as the zodiac, overlaid the theme with moral and symbolic meanings. As objects and elements in a game, tablemen made of ivory or bone already symbolise the dominion of human

2  VISUAL CULTURE 

37

society over the natural world. To add a debate between different forms of written authority by pitting one hero against another adds a new and creative dimension to a board game involving speed, probability and challenges.67 The exploits of Samson and the labours of Hercules open up competitive debates on the lines of: Is it stronger to overcome a lion by stifling it or by strangling it? Is it bolder to kill Philistines with an ass’s mandible or to kill three-headed Geryon?68 Further potential for confecting new stories can be seen in the image of a blind man led by a boy that appears on another tableman attributed to the Cologne workshop. It is assumed to illustrate the blind Samson led at his own request to the pillars of the temple of Dagon (Judges 16:26). The man is holding a flowering branch in his hand, possibly an allusion to a Jewish tradition that Samson pulled up a tree by the roots before he brought down the temple.69 A ‘Hercules’ cycle tableman depicts the blind seer Tiresias, dressed as a woman, sitting next to the child hero as he kills two snakes. The blinded Samson ends his life, while the life of Hercules is just beginning.70 Comparison may also create new connections between the competing narratives. A true riddle on a tableman depicts a beardless man standing in front of a seated woman. The man is shaking off the fetters or ropes that are binding his wrists. The words inscribed around the couple are: ‘Vinculis diruptis terretur perfidus hostis’ (With the fetters torn apart, the treacherous enemy is terrified). For Weitzmann, this ambivalent scene may be a loose rendering of Samson’s repeated breaking of ropes, straps and other bindings (15: 13–14; 16: 7–15).71 The ‘enemy’ must be taken to be the woman, but in the Vulgate, Samson is never put in chains. The image and text together invite the viewer to identify the story of Samson, but they do not describe or illustrate it accurately. Compared to other tablemen, the puzzle grows more complex, because the seated woman is also found elsewhere as Tiresias in female form with the child Hercules. Gender conflict is found in other tablemen, such as a depiction of Hercules pulling Hippolyta by her hair, echoing Delilah shearing Samson. An alternative image found in Bayeux depicts Judith decapitating Holophernes.72 A similar narrative design appears on a tableman dated to the early twelfth century, possibly from England. It depicts a seated Delilah handing her shears to a man, with the bald Samson lying recumbent between the two figures, his head in her lap (Fig. 2.2). The image invites a viewer to think about the multiple connotations of his reclining ‘in sinu’, like a child, a lover or a cadaver.

38 

C. LÉGLU

Fig. 2.2  © Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Tableman, walrus ivory, depicting Samson and Delilah, probably England (possibly St Albans), c. 1130–1140

2  VISUAL CULTURE 

39

Beyond the fact that many board games are conceived as narratives (a battle or a hunt), the games played with these pieces also attracted narrative glosses. One text recasts a problem in the game of draughts (in Anglo-Norman French, jeu de dames, ‘the game of ladies’), in terms of relations between the lovers Tristan and Iseut and Iseut’s woman servant Brangein.73 The erotic symbolism of board games appears in the many representations in medieval art of male and female couples playing tables, chess or other games on stained-glass windows, ivory caskets, as well as in vernacular poetry.74 Actually enacting the combat between male and female figures through tablemen would bring a new dimension to this underlying narrative. It alerts the viewer (the player) to the doubleentendre that accompanied board games in courtly settings. Such confrontations of strength with guile will be developed in the next chapter, where the confrontation between Samson and Delilah is narrated in verse and dramatised in music. This chapter moves away from the court and from tituli, and returns to the religious uses of the motif of the lionkiller, in order to focus again, more closely, on south-west England and on those fragmentary witnesses of the book culture that subtends these enigmatic images. The conflict between Samson and Delilah offers more complex interpretations than the lion-killer, yet it is this motif that relies on book culture and typology for its symbolism. Returning to the lion-killers in Herefordshire (Fig. 2.1), it is notoriously difficult to identify precise models and sources for art in this period, but, as Thurlby has shown, this region provides one illuminating cluster of books and religious houses that hinges on the influence of Victorine learning beyond Paris.75 The lay nobleman Oliver de Merlimond was identified by Zarnecki as the patron of some of the ‘Herefordshire school’ sculpture, as well as his friend Robert of Béthune, bishop of Hereford (reigned 1131–1148), who had allegedly studied at Saint-Victor of Paris with its founding master, William of Champeaux (c. 1070–d. 1121).76 Robert of Béthune was elected bishop in 1130 after a period of service as one of the first priors of the Augustinian house of Llanthony (he had been a canon there since 1115), and he maintained a close connection with that community of Augustinian canons after he moved them to the outskirts of Gloucester in 1136. Between 1135 and 1141, Oliver of Merlimond founded a priory and invited two canons of the new abbey of Saint-Victor of Paris to live under his patronage near the church that he was building at Shobdon.77 These men remained in the region in different locations

40 

C. LÉGLU

(possibly against their will) and eventually settled in Wigmore.78 A new house was founded and built in Bristol (now Bristol cathedral), with an abbot who was also from Saint-Victor. A daughter-house was founded at Keynsham around 1167, with an abbot who was described in the foundation charter as ‘venerable’.79 A small carving of the lion-killer survives in Keynsham Abbey. The Victorine house that would settle at Wigmore recruited a noted biblical exegete and Hebraist, Andrew of Saint-Victor.80 Andrew served as abbot initially between the years 1147 and 1155 and then returned to Paris. The bishop and canons persuaded him to return to Wigmore (1163–1175). His work was cited by Victorine and other theologians as a reliable source for Jewish Scripture for the next century.81 Robert de Béthune’s successor as bishop of Hereford was Gilbert Foliot, dedicatee of Osbern Pinnock of Gloucester’s commentary on the Book of Judges (discussed in Chapter 1). Foliot was also patron to a certain Odo, whose diagrammatic summa, the Ysagoge in theologiam, contains transcriptions, translations and transliterations of the Masoretic text of the Tanakh. Odo’s work reflects the work of Hugh of Saint-Victor as well as Abelard and the ‘School of Chartres’; it is variously dated to c. 1135 and 1140– 1155.82 Only one complete manuscript survives, probably copied in the Benedictine Abbey of Cerne, Dorset. Three epitomes and partial copies were made of it in the Welsh Marches: two in the Cistercian houses of Dore and Buildwas (d. 1176), and the other around 1200 in Rochester cathedral. The three epitomes reflect a desire in these regions for new school learning, and Odo’s work reflects the presence of Victorine canons recruited from Paris.83 The extent and significance of Christian-Jewish exchanges are disputed, but recent research shows that there was significant intellectual and interreligious dialogue in twelfth-century Paris as well as in England.84 Twelfth-century Herefordshire and the Marches were remote from great schools, courts and cities. Nevertheless, the activity was there, and it may have been supported by the development of Hereford’s Jewry in the late twelfth century. Hereford’s remoteness and its position on the borders made it a haven for Jews from Gloucester and Oxford in an increasingly hostile context.85 There are clearly possibilities for a politicised reading of the Herefordshire lion-killers, given their creation in the period of the Anarchy and on the orders of families that were involved in the conflict. Nor was the patron necessarily secular. The parish church of

2  VISUAL CULTURE 

41

Stretton Sugwas (Herefordshire) passed into the landholdings of the newly founded priory of Llanthony II, near Gloucester, in 1142.86 One clue may lie in a tympanum of the Benedictine priory of Saint-Pierrede-Mauriac (Cantal), which depicts an abbot standing next to a lionkiller with the inscription: ‘See Samson having overcome the lion with his hands’. According to Kendall, the image may allude to political tensions between monastic, cathedral and secular authority.87 Samson sitting astride the lion and prising open its mouth is therefore not necessarily a lion-killer but a lion-tamer. He embodies the cleric’s duty to avoid military action in enforcing his authority. Such a peaceable, ecclesiastical lion-killer is Saint Samson of Dol (feast day, July 28th). This ascetic bishop’s cult embraced Wales, Cornwall and Brittany, with its hub at the cathedral of Dol (now Dol-de-Bretagne).88 His Lives say that he was born and educated in Wales and founded monastic houses in Cornwall and in Brittany.89 In the tenth century, King Æthelstan gave relics of Saint Samson of Dol to the Benedictine Abbeys of Milton (Dorset) and Abingdon (Oxfordshire).90 Although the cult did not thrive in post-Conquest England, two new versions of the life of St Samson were created around the year 1130, one in Brittany by Baudri de Bourgueil, archbishop of Dol, and the other at Llandaff, in Wales.91 Like his biblical namesake, St Samson’s birth is announced by an angel who orders his mother to have him educated for the priesthood.92 A fountain springs up to quench his thirst after he has killed his enemy (a dragon), and a miracle occurs concerning the consumption of honey. He tames and disciplines the wilderness, despatching a lion as well as adders, four dragons and a witch.93 The lion-killing occurs during Samson’s embassy to the Frankish king and queen (Taylor, ch. 54–60). The queen insults the saint, sends him poison and attacks him with an unbroken horse (Taylor, ch. 55–56). When these fail, she orders a lion to be set loose by its keepers. Samson walks fearlessly towards the lion, and it flees ‘just as if it had received a blow in the eyes’.94 Samson challenges the animal and prays for it to die, which it does. This scene reverses the terms of the biblical scene. St Samson’s lion is not encountered in the desert. It is caged at court, and as such, it is used as an expression of human, secular power, quelled by the religious words of the cleric rather than by physical strength. According to Baudri de Bourgueil, this exploit surpasses that of the biblical hero because St Samson defeated the lion’s mouth with prayer alone.95

42 

C. LÉGLU

The presence of lion-killers in the Welsh Marches and southern and south-west England might reflect the presence of relics of St Samson at Abingdon and Milton, as well as the prominence of the saint in Wales. It was a minor cult in English litanies and calendars after the Conquest, though the given name appears in post-Conquest families, notably Bishop Samson of Worcester (d. 1121), the translator Sanson de Nanteuil (active in the mid-twelfth century) and Samson of Tottington, abbot of Bury St Edmunds (c. 1135–1211).96 To conclude, the importance of books for the Victorine order as well as for the Augustinian canons suggests that the carved lion-killers of these regions are more than a simple motif illustrating masculine strength. They may have typological connotations, or they may carry political messages that promote the power of words over physical force. Yet Samson as lion-killer is never far from Samson as victim of Delilah. The lion-killers at Alveley (Shropshire) were probably originally created for its parish church. It is about 50 miles away from the tympanum of Stretton Sugwas, which is reachable on a route past the Benedictine priory of Leominster (another lion-killer image is there), a daughter-house of Reading Abbey, where a lyric drama about Samson’s fall and death, Samson, dux fortissime was sung from the thirteenth century. Alveley also lies 29 miles away from the Cistercian Abbey of Buildwas, where a monk jotted down the first stanza of Samson, dux fortissime.97 There are no sculptures of Delilah, but the circulation of a song shows that this episode was part of the artistic culture of these regions. The earls of Hereford held lands a few miles southeast of Reading Abbey, in Shinfield. In 1289, that manor passed to the bishop of Hereford, thus ensuring continued connections between secular and religious powers in the two regions.98 The lion-killer is on one of the gaming counters that someone threw into the moat at Gloucester castle, only a few miles from the new Augustinian priory of Llanthony II. The commentary by Osbern Pinnock transmitted bestiary material from Benedictine Gloucester to the episcopal court at Hereford; the ekphrastic typology of the Pictor in carmine underlines the importance of dialogues between written and visual cultures in this region.99 Lion-killers and lion-tamers could be heroes, kings or sainted bishops. They were invested with multiple meanings, reflecting overlapping interpretations of biblical and moral sources. Bestiary lore and iconography may have been transmitted orally, for example via sermons, songs or through readings of a verse summary of the Bible such as the Poème anglo-normand de l’Ancien Testament that was held in the library or grammar school of Llanthony II (Oxford

2  VISUAL CULTURE 

43

Corpus Christi College, MS 36).100 Nobel describes vernacular summaries of the Bible as a key mediating element between the laity and the Vulgate.101 The next chapter will explore this text in terms of its treatment of the Samson story and will seek to develop further this suggestion that it served as a mediator between secular and religious culture by linking it with two musical adaptations of the fall of Samson in Latin.

Notes











1.  Herbert L. Kessler, “Evil Eye(ing): Romanesque Art as a Shield of Faith”, in Romanesque Art and Thought in the Twelfth Century: Essays in Honor of Walter Cahn, ed. Colum Hourihane (University Park, PA: Index of Christian Art, Princeton University, Penn State University Press, 2008), 107–135. 2. My thanks to Peter Kruschwitz for help with the Latin inscriptions in this chapter. 3. Paul Clemen, Die romanische Monumentalmalerei in den Rheinlanden (Düsseldorf: L. Schwann, 1916), 141, 155. For details of the restoration, see 137–139, and 149. 4. George Zarnecki, Later English Romanesque Sculpture, 1140–1210 (London: Tiranti, 1953), 12–15. Malcolm Thurlby, The Herefordshire School of Romanesque Sculpture, with a History of the Anarchy by Bruce Coplestone-Crow (Hereford: Logaston Press, 1999). 5. Iffley (Oxfordshire), Stretton Sugwas (Herefordshire), both in Zarnecki, Later English Romanesque Sculpture, 12–15, 44, plates 32, 107. 6.  For Stretton Sugwas, see the description and photographs in The Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture in Britain and Ireland: http://www. crsbi.ac.uk/. On Alveley, see Rachel Morton, “Ridiculous Monsters: Further Herefordshire School Sculptures Discovered at the Former”, Bell Inn, Alveley, Shropshire: http://www.alveleyhistoricalsociety.com/ uploads/2/3/2/3/23232952/the_bell_inn_alveley.pdf. 25, 37, 40 and Figs. 1–8. 7.  Elizabeth Parker McLachlan, Malcolm Thurlby, and Charles T. Little, “Romanesque Reassembled in England: A Review”, Gesta, 24.1 (1985): 81. 8. Thurlby, The Herefordshire School, 83–85, 111. 9. Robert Favreau, “Le thème iconographique du lion dans les inscriptions médiévales’, Comptes-rendus des séances de l’Académie des inscriptions et des belles-lettres, 3 (1991): 613–636. 10. Marie Risselin-Steenebrugen, “A propos d’un tissu du haut Moyen Age et du tympan au Samson de la collégiale de Nivelles”, Bulletin de la Commission Royale des monuments et des sites, 10 (1981): 13.

44 

C. LÉGLU

11. Ilene H. Forsyth, “The Samson Monolith”, in The Brummer Collection of Medieval Art: Duke University Museum of Art, ed. Caroline Bruzelius and Jill Meredith (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1991), 20–55. 12. Zarnecki, Later English Romanesque Sculpture, 12–15. RisselinSteenebrugen, “A propos d’un tissu”. 13. Frances Altvater, Sacramental Theology and the Decoration of Baptismal Fonts: Incarnation, Initiation, Institution (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017), 73–74. 14.  Risselin-Steenebrugen, “A propos d’un tissu”, 8, 13–15; Eva R. Hoffman, “Pathways of Portability: Islamic and Christian Interchange from the Tenth to the Twelfth Century”, Art History, 24.1 (2001): 38. 15.  Tingelstad Church, in Martin Blindheim, Norwegian Romanesque Decorative Sculpture, 1090–1210 (London: Alec Tiranti, 1965), 19, plate 130, and 36, plate 171. 16.  George Swarzenski, “Samson Killing the Lion: A Medieval Bronze Group”, Bulletin of the Museum of Fine Arts, 38 (1940): 74. Hoffman, “Pathways”, 18–21. 17. Sara Offenberg, “Mirroring Samson the Martyr: Reflections of JewishChristian Relations in the North French Hebrew Miscellany”, in Jews and Christians in Thirteenth-Century Europe, ed. Elisheva Baumgarten and Judah Galinsky (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 203–216. 18. Margalith, “The Legends of Samson/Heracles”, 66–68. Kirk Ambrose, “Samson, David, or Hercules?” Ambiguous Identities in some Romanesque Sculptures of Lion Fighters”, Konstkistorik Tidskrift, 74 (2005): 1–17. Vivian B. Mann, “Samson vs. Hercules: A Carved Cycle of the 12th Century”, Acta, 7 (1980): 1–38. 19.  Jean-Philippe Meyer, “Deux sculpteurs du XIIe siècle en Alsace: les Maîtres d’Eschau et d’Andlau”, In Situ, 17 (2011): http://insitu. revues.org/7601, Section 24. 20.  Church choir of St Martin-de-Layrac, see Henri Stern, “Une mosaïque de pavement romane de Layrac (Lot-et-Garonne)”, Cahiers archéologiques: Fin de l’antiquité et moyen âge, 20 (1970): 81–98. List of examples, Forsyth, “The Samson Monolith”, note 47. 21. Karl-August Wirth, Pictor in carmine. Ein Handbuch der Typologie aus der Zeit um 1200. Nach Ms 300 des Corpus Christi College in Cambridge (Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 2006), 244, items CIX (5), CX (4). 22. C. M. Kauffmann, “New Images for Anselm’s Table Talk: An Illustrated Manuscript of the Liber de Similitudinibus”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 74 (2011): 100, 103, Fig. 9. BL Cotton MS Cleopatra C. XI, f.14. 23.  Favreau, “Le thème iconographique”. Ambrose, “Samson, David, or Hercules?”

2  VISUAL CULTURE 



















45

24. Harald Busch and Bernd Lohse, Romanesque Sculpture (London: B.T. Batsford, 1962), 162. Ambrose, “Samson, David, or Hercules?” 25. Kessler, “Evil Eye(ing)”, 109–112. 26. Risselin-Steenebrugen, “A propos d’un tissu”, 12–13. 27. Beverly Kienzle, “The Bestiary of Heretics: Imaging Medieval Christian Heresy with Insects and Animals”, in A Communion of Subjects: Animals in Religion, Science, and Ethics, ed. Paul Waldau and Kimberley Patton (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), 105. 28.  The Year 1200, ed. Konrad Hoffmann, Florens Deuchler (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1970), cat. No. 171, 164–165, possibly from Malmesbury Abbey. See also cat. No. 175, 179. 29. Isidore of Seville, Allegoriae quaedam Scripturae sacrae, ed. Jacques Paul Migne, Patrologia Latina cursus completus, vol. 83 (Paris: n.p., 1862), cols. 111–112. Petrus Comestor, Historia Scholastica, ed. Jacques Paul Migne, Patrologia latina cursus completus, vol. 198 (Paris: n.p., 1855), col. 1053–1722. 30. “Ecce dies celebris”, in Margot Fassler, Gothic Song: Victorine Sequences and Augustinian Reform in Twelfth-Century Paris (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 280–281, strophes IV.2-V2. 31. Wirth, Pictor, 109–111. 32. William Noel, “The First Iconographer of the Morgan Picture Bible”, in Between the Picture and the Word, ed. Colum Hourihane (Princeton, NJ; Index of Christian Art, 2005), 111. Lucy Freeman Sandler, “Worded and Wordless Images: Biblical Narratives in the Psalters of Humphrey of Bohun”, in The Social Life of Illumination: Manuscripts, Images, and Communities in the late Middle Ages, ed. Joyce Coleman, Mark Cruse and Kathryn A. Smith (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 86. 33. Madeline H. Caviness, “Biblical Stories in Windows: Were They Bibles for the Poor?” in The Bible in the Middle Ages: Its Influence on Literature and Art, ed. B. S. Levy, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 89 (Binghamton: Centre for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, State University of New York, 1992), 103–147. 34. Madeline H. Caviness, Reframing Medieval Art: Difference, Margins, Boundaries, Tufts University electronic book, 2001. Chapter 4: “Edging Out Difference: Revisiting the Margins as a Post Modern Project”: http://dca.lib.tufts.edu/caviness/chapter4.html. 35. Neil Stratford, “Verse tituli and Romanesque Art”, in Romanesque Art and Thought in the Twelfth Century: Essays in Honor of Walter Cahn, ed. Colum Hourihane (University Park, PA: Index of Christian Art, Princeton University, Penn State University Press, 2008), 136–138. 36. Stratford, “Verse tituli”, 146–151. 37. Stratford, “Verse tituli”, 150–151.

46 











C. LÉGLU

38. Ilene H. Forsyth, “Word-Play in the Cloister at Moissac”, in Romanesque Art and Thought in the Twelfth Century: Essays in Honor of Walter Cahn, ed. Colum Hourihane (University Park, PA: Index of Christian Art, Princeton University, Penn State University Press, 2008), 154–178. 39. Wirth, Pictor, 113, 223, 224, 228, 235, 240, 244. Greti DinkovaBruun, “Biblical Thematics: The Story of Samson in Medieval Literary Discourse”, in The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Latin Literature, ed. Ralph Hexter and David Townsend (Oxford Handbooks Online, 2012), http://www.oxfordhandbooks.com, 5–8. Greti DinkovaBruun, “Autor, Authorship and the Literal Sense of the Bible: the Case of Leonius of Paris”, in Bibel und Exegese in der Abtei Sankt Viktor zu Paris. Form und Funktion eines Grundtextes im europäischen Raum, ed. Rainer Berndt (Münster: Aschendorff, 2009), 259–277. 40. Dinkova-Bruun, “Biblical thematics”, 8–9. 41. Greti Dinkova-Bruun, “Leonius of Paris and his Liber Ruth”, in Schrift, Schreiber, Schenker: Studien zur Abtei Sankt Viktor in Paris und den Viktorinern, ed. S. J. Rainer Berndt. Corpus Victorinum, Instrumenta; 1 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2005), 291–316. See also Dinkova-Bruun, “Biblical Thematics”, 7–8. 42. Dinkova-Bruun, “Autor”, and Hollengreen, “The Politics”, 63. See also Dahan, “Samson et Dalila”, 98, 105–116. 43. S. L. Daly, “Peter Comestor: Master of Histories”, Speculum, 62 (1957): 62–73. James H. Morey, “Peter Comestor, Biblical Paraphrase, and the Medieval Popular Bible”, Speculum, 68 (1993): 6–35. 44. Charles Wilson, An Enquiry into the Difference of Style Observable in Ancient Glass Paintings, Especially in England: First Part (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1867), 363. 45. Stuart Whatling, “Narrative Art in Northern Europe, c. 1140–1300: A Narratological Re-appraisal”, Coutauld Institute, 2010: http://www. medievalart.org.uk/index.html. Auxerre: http://www.medievalart.org. uk/Auxerre/bay_11/Auxerre_Bay11_Key.htm. 46.  Walter Cahn, “Romanesque Sculpture and the Spectator”, in The Lincoln Symposium Papers: The Romanesque Frieze and its Spectator, ed. Deborah Kahn (London: Harvey Miller, 1992), 44–60. Stratford, “Visual tituli”, 138. 47. Kristine Edmonson Haney, The Winchester Psalter: An Iconographical Study (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1986), 13–14. 48. William Noel, The Oxford Bible Pictures, from the Walters Art Museum (Lucerne: Facsimile/Walters Art Museum, 2004), 66–70. 49.  Cahn, “Romanesque Sculpture”, 54–57. Christine B. Verzar, ‘Text and Image in North Italian Romanesque Sculpture’, in The Lincoln Symposium Papers: The Romanesque Frieze and Its Spectator, ed. Deborah Kahn (London: Harvey Miller, 1992), 120–140.

2  VISUAL CULTURE 



47

50. Favreau, “Le thème”, 613–614. 51. Jack M. Sasson, “Who Cut Samson’s Hair? (And Other Trifling Issues Raised by Judges 16)”, Prooftexts, 8.3 (1988): 333–339. 52. Adelheid Heimann, “The Master of Gargilesse: A French Sculptor of the First Half of the Twelfth Century”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 42 (1979): 53–54. 53. Calvin Kendall, Allegory of the Church: Romanesque Portals and Their Verse Inscriptions (Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1998), 205–206; Anat Tcherikover, High Romanesque Sculpture in the Duchy of Aquitaine, c. 1090–1140 (Clarendon Studies in the History of Art) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 22–23, 55 (plate 161). 54. Kendall, Allegory, 205–206; See also Forsyth, “Word Play”. 55.  Vivian B. Mann, “Mythological Subjects on Northern French Tablemen”, Gesta, 20.1 (1981): 161–171, also by Mann, “Samson vs. Hercules”. 56. H. J. R. Murray, “The Mediaeval Game of Tables”, Medium Ævum, 10 (1941): 57–69. H. J. R. Murray, A History of Board Games Other Than Chess (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952). Mark A. Hall, “Playtime Everyday: The Material Culture of Medieval Gaming”, in History of Everyday Life in Medieval Scotland, ed. Edward J Cowan and Lizanne Henderson (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011), 145–168. 57. Meredith Parsons Lillich, “The Tric-Trac Window of Le Mans”, The Art Bulletin, 65 (1983): 23–33. 58. Jean-François Goret, “Les pièces de jeu du château de Mayenne”, in Echecs et tric-trac: Fabrication et usages des jeux de table au Moyen Age, ed. Mathieu Grandet and Jean-François Goret (Paris: Editions Errance, 2012), 57–62; Nicole Meyer and Michaël Wyss, “Un jeu de table du XIIe siècle provenant des fouilles de Saint-Denis”, Archéologie médiévale, 19 (1989): 103–113; Viviane Aubourg and Didier Josset, “Le site du promontoire du château de Blois du VIIIe au XIe s. (Loir-et-Cher) Seconde partie: le mobilier non céramique”, Revue archéologique du Centre de la France, 42 (2003): 194. 59.  The Year 1200, 62 and 114–115; Favreau, “Le thème”, 615. Clemen, Die romanische Monumentalmalerei, 155. 60. Ian J. Stewart and Malcolm J. Watkins, “An 11th-Century Bone Tabula Set from Gloucester”, Medieval Archaeology, 28 (1984): 188–189, plate xv, a; Paul Williamson, Medieval Ivory Carvings: Early Christian to Romanesque (London: V&A Publishing, 2010), 421, cat.no. 109. 61. Jean-François Goret, “Le mobilier osseux travaillé découvert sur le site du  «Vieux-Château»  de Château-Thierry (Aisne). IXe-XIIe siècles”, Revue archéologique de Picardie, 3–4 (1997): 126–129. 62. Mann, “Mythological Subjects”, 161, 166–167.

48 













C. LÉGLU

63. Mann, “Mythological Subjects”, 168, note 5. 64. Mann, “Mythological Subjects”, 164–165. 65. Vivian Mann, Art and Ceremony in Jewish Life: Essays on the History of Jewish Art (London: Pindar Press, 2005), 153–173. 66.  John V. Fleming, “Muses of the Monastery”, Speculum, 76 (2003): 1086–1089. 67. Murray, A History of Board-Games, 117–119. 68. Mann, “Mythological Subjects”, 165. Ambrose, 6–10. 69.  New York, Met Museum, Cloisters Collection, accession number 1988.158. Mirror of the Medieval World, ed. William D. Wixom (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1999), Item 79, 65. Scheiber, “Samson Uprooting a Tree”, and “Further Parallels”. 70.  London, British Museum, number 1291.6.4.1., Mann, Art and Ceremony, Fig. 4. 71. Kurt Weitzmann, “Samson and Delilah on a Draughtsman”, Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University, 7.2 (1948): 5–9. 72. Mann, Art and Ceremony, Figs.  4, 11, and Musée du Louvre, Département des objets d’art, number 30-01-03/10. 73. Lillich, “The Tric-Trac Window”, 30. 74. James E. Doan, “The Erotics of Backgammon in Provençal and Irish Poetry”, Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium, 12 (1992) (Harvard University, 1995), 29–42. 75. C. Stephen Jaeger, The Envy of Angels: Cathedral Schools and Social Ideals in Medieval Europe, 950–1200 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998), 244–268. 76.  Hereford Cathedral: A History, ed. G. E. Aylmer and John Eric Tiller (London and Rio Grande: Hambledon Press, 2000), 27–29. 77. Thurlby, The Herefordshire School, 15–16. 78. Thurlby, The Herefordshire School, 22, 26–27, 32. 79. Lee Prosser, “The Keynsham Hundred: A Study of the Evolution of a North Somerset Estate”, Ph.D. diss., University of Bristol, 1995, 143– 144, 219. 80. Paul Saenger, “The Twelfth-Century Reception of Oriental languages and the Graphic mise-en-page of Latin Vulgate Bibles Copied in England”, in Form and Function in the Late Medieval Bible, ed. Eyal Poleg and Laura Light (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 31–66. 81. Smalley, Study of the Bible. Gilbert Dahan, “Interprétations juives chez Pierre le Chantre”, in The Bible in the Medieval World: Essays in Memory of Beryl Smalley, ed. Katherine Walsh and Diana Wood (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985), 131–155. 82. Eva de Visscher, Reading the Rabbis: Christian Hebraism in the Works of Herbert of Bosham (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2014), 14–15.

2  VISUAL CULTURE 









49

83.  Michael Evans, “The Ysagoge in Theologiam and the Commentaries Attributed to Bernard Silvestris”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 54 (1991): 1–3, 37, 41–42. 84.  Deborah L. Goodwin, “Nothing in Our Histories: A Postcolonial Perspective on Twelfth-Century Christian Hebraism”, Medieval Encounters, 15.1 (2009), 43–45. 85. Joe Hillaby, ‘Testimony from the Margins: The Gloucester Jewry and Its Neighbours, c.1159–1290”, Jewish Historical Studies, 37 (2001): 41–112. 86.  Carleton Brown, “A Thirteenth-Century Manuscript from Llanthony Priory”, Speculum, 3.4 (1928): 594–595. 87. Kendall, The Allegory of the Church, 158–59. For a similar image from the same region, see Bernard Pousthomis, “Moustier-Ventadour – château de Ventadour”, ADLFI. Archéologie de la France – Informations, Limousin, 2013: http://adlfi.revues.org/16108. 88. Richard Sowerby, “The Lives of St Samson: Rewriting the Ambitions of an Early Medieval Cult”, Francia, 38 (2011): 22. See the recent volume, St Samson of Dol and the Earliest History of Brittany, Cornwall and Wales, ed. Lynette Olson (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2017). 89. Pierre Flobert, La vie ancienne de Saint Samson de Dol (Paris: CNRS, 1997). Text and translation into English, Thomas Taylor, The Life of St. Samson of Dol (London: SPCK, 1925). 90. Sarah Foot, Æthelstan: The First king of England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011), 191–193. 91. Armelle Le Huërou, “La réécriture d’un texte hagiographique au XIIe siècle: la Vita sancti Sansonis, de Baudri de Bourgueil”, Annales de Bretagne et des Pays de l’Ouest, 108/2 (2001): 7–30, online with different pagination: https://abpo.revues.org/1729; John Reuben Davies, “Cathedrals and the Cult of Saints in Eleventh- and TwelfthCentury Wales”, in Cathedrals, Communities and Conflict in the AngloNorman World, ed. Paul Dalton, Charles Insley, and Louise J. Wilkinson (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2011), 110 and note 48; John Reuben Davies, The Book of Llandaf and the Norman Church in Wales (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2003), 13–14. 92. Thomas Taylor, The Life of St. Samson of Dol (London: SPCK, 1925), Part 1, Chapters 2–7. 93. David C. Harvey, “Constructed Landscapes and Social Memory: Tales of St Samson in Early Medieval Cornwall”, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 20 (2002): 239–241; Taylor, Chapters 26–29, 32, 50, 58, 60. La très ancienne Vie inédite de S. Samson, premier évèque de Dole en Bretagne, ed. Dom Francois Plaine (Paris: Bray et Retaux, 1887), xxxiv–v.

50 

C. LÉGLU



94. Translation from Taylor, Life, Part 1, ch. 57, 55–56; Plaine, La très ancienne vie, 51–52 (De leone exstincto). 95. Plaine, La très ancienne vie inédite, 5–6. Armelle Le Huërou, “La réécriture d’un texte hagiographique au XIIe siècle: la Vita sancti Sansonis, de Baudri de Bourgueil”, Annales de Bretagne et des Pays de l’Ouest, 108/2 (2001): 7–30. 96. Christine Rauer, Beowulf and the Dragon: Parallels and Analogues (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2000), 100–101, 110. 97. On Buildwas, see Kauffmann, ‘New Images’, 91, citing J. M. Sheppard, “The Twelfth-Century Library and Scriptorium at Buildwas: Assessing the Evidence”, in England in the Twelfth Century, ed. D. Williams (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1990), 193–204. 98.  See the entry for Shinfield, Berkshire: http://www.crsbi.ac.uk/ site/332/. 99. Thurlby, The Herefordshire School, 56, 106–109, 112, 118, 124–125, 147. 100.  Jean-Pascal Pouzet, “Augustinian Canons and their Insular French Books in Medieval England: Towards an Assessment”, in Language and Culture in Medieval Britain: The French of England, c.1100–c.1500, ed. Jocelyn Wogan-Browne (Woodbridge: York Medieval Press, 2009), 270 and n. 20. 101.  Poème anglo-normand sur l’Ancien Testament, ed. Pierre Nobel, 2 vols. (Paris: Champion, 1996), I, 12.

Bibliography Altvater, Frances. Sacramental Theology and the Decoration of Baptismal Fonts: Incarnation, Initiation, Institution. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017. Ambrose, Kirk. “Samson, David, or Hercules? Ambiguous Identities in some Romanesque Sculptures of Lion Fighters”, Konstkistorik Tidskrift, 74 (2005): 1–17. Art Roman: http://www.art-roman.net/aulnay/aulnay.htm. Aubourg, Viviane, and Didier Josset. “Le site du promontoire du château de Blois du VIIIe au XIe s. (Loir-et-Cher) - Seconde partie: le mobilier non céramique”, Revue archéologique du Centre de la France, 42 (2003): 169–216. Aylmer, G. E., and John Eric Tiller, ed. Hereford Cathedral: A History. London and Rio Grande: Hambledon Press, 2000. Blinheim, Martin. Norwegian Romanesque Decorative Sculpture, 1090–1210. London: Alec Tiranti, 1965. Brown, Carleton. “A Thirteenth-Century Manuscript from Llanthony Priory”, Speculum, 3.4 (1928): 587–595.

2  VISUAL CULTURE 

51

Buc, Philippe. L’Ambiguïté du livre: Princes, pouvoir, et peuple dans les commentaires de la Bible au Moyen Age. Paris: Beauchesne, 1994. Busch, Harald, and Bernd Lohse. Romanesque Sculpture. London: B.T. Batsford, 1962. Cahn, Walter. “Romanesque Sculpture and the Spectator”, in The Lincoln Symposium Papers: The Romanesque Frieze and Its Spectator, ed. Deborah Kahn, 44–60. London: Harvey Miller, 1992. Caviness, Madeline H. “Biblical Stories in Windows: Were They Bibles for the Poor?” in The Bible in the Middle Ages: Its Influence on Literature and Art, ed. B.S. Levy, 103–147. (Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 89). Binghampton: Centre for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, State University of New York, 1992. Caviness, Madeline H. Reframing Medieval Art: Difference, Margins, Boundaries. Tufts University Electronic Book, 2001. http://dca.lib.tufts. edu/caviness/chapter4.html. Clemen, Paul. Die romanische Monumentalmalerei in den Rheinlanden. Düsseldorf: L. Schwann, 1916. Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture in Britain and Ireland: http://www.crsbi. ac.uk/. Dahan, Gilbert. “Interprétations juives chez Pierre le Chantre”, in The Bible in the Medieval World: Essays in Memory of Beryl Smalley, ed. Katherine Walsh and Diana Wood, 131–155. Oxford: Blackwell, 1985. Daly, S. L. “Peter Comestor: Master of Histories”, Speculum, 62 (1957): 62–73. Davies, John Reuben. The Book of Llandaf and the Norman Church in Wales. Woodbridge: Boydell, 2003. ———. “Cathedrals and the Cult of Saints in Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century Wales”, in Cathedrals, Communities and Conflict in the Anglo-Norman World, ed. Paul Dalton, Charles Insley, and Louise J. Wilkinson, 99–116. Woodbridge: Boydell, 2011. de Hamel, C. F. R. Glossed Books of the Bible and the Origins of the Paris Booktrade. Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer, 1984. Dinkova-Bruun, Greti. “Leonius of Paris and His Liber Ruth”, in Schrift, Schreiber, Schenker: Studien zur Abtei Sankt Viktor in Paris und den Viktorinern, ed. S. J. Rainer Berndt, 291–316 (Corpus Victorinum, Instrumenta; 1). Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2005. ———. “Autor, Authorship and the Literal Sense of the Bible: The Case of Leonius of Paris”, in Bibel und Exegese in der Abtei Sankt Viktor zu Paris. Form und Funktion eines Grundtextes im europäischen Raum, ed. Rainer Berndt, 259–277. Münster: Aschendorff, 2009. ———. “Biblical Thematics: The Story of Samson in Medieval Literary Discourse”, in The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Latin Literature, ed. Ralph Haexter and David Townsend, Oxford Handbooks Online, 2012, no pagination: http://www.oxfordhandbooks.com.

52 

C. LÉGLU

Doan, James E. “The Erotics of Backgammon in Provençal and Irish Poetry”, Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium, 12 (1992): 29–42. Evans, Michael. “The Ysagoge in Theologiam and the Commentaries Attributed to Bernard Silvestris”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 54 (1991): 1–42. Fassler, Margot. Gothic Song: Victorine Sequences and Augustinian Reform in Twelfth-Century Paris. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Favreau, Robert. “Le thème iconographique du lion dans les inscriptions médiévales”, Comptes-rendus des séances de l’Académie des inscriptions et des belles-lettres, 3 (1991): 613–636. Fleming, John V. “Muses of the Monastery”, Speculum, 76 (2003): 1071–1106. Flobert, Pierre. La vie ancienne de Saint Samson de Dol. Paris: CNRS, 1997. Forsyth, Ilene H. “The Samson Monolith”, in The Brummer Collection of Medieval Art: Duke University Museum of Art, ed. Caroline Bruzelius and Jill Meredith, 20–55. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1991. ———. “Word-Play in the Cloister at Moissac”, in Romanesque Art and Thought in the Twelfth Century: Essays in Honor of Walter Cahn, ed. Colum Hourihane, 154–178. University Park, PA: Index of Christian Art, Princeton University, Penn State University Press, 2008. Goret, Jean-François. “Le mobilier osseux travaillé découvert sur le site du  «Vieux-Château»  de Château-Thierry (Aisne). IXe-XIIe siècles”, Revue archéologique de Picardie, 3–4 (1997): 101–136. ———. “Les pièces de jeu du château de Mayenne”, in Echecs et tric-trac: Fabrication et usages des jeux de table au Moyen Age, ed. Mathieu Grandet and Jean-François Goret, 57– 62. Paris: Editions Errance, 2012. Hall, Mark A. “Playtime Everyday: The Material Culture of Medieval Gaming”, in History of Everyday Life in Medieval Scotland, ed. Edward J. Cowan and Lizanne Henderson, 145–168. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011. Haney, Kristine Edmonson. The Winchester Psalter: An Iconographical Study. Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1986. Harvey, David C. “Constructed Landscapes and Social Memory: Tales of St Samson in Early Medieval Cornwall”, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 20 (2002): 231–248. Heimann, Adelheid. “The Master of Gargilesse: A French Sculptor of the First Half of the Twelfth Century”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 42 (1979): 47–64. Herbert L. Kessler. “Evil Eye(ing): Romanesque Art as a Shield of Faith”, in Romanesque Art and Thought in the Twelfth Century: Essays in Honor of Walter Cahn, ed. Colum Hourihane, 107–135. University Park, PA: Index of Christian Art, Princeton University, Penn State University Press, 2008. Hillaby, Joe. “Testimony from the Margins: The Gloucester Jewry and Its Neighbours, c. 1159–1290”, Jewish Historical Studies, 37 (2001): 41–112.

2  VISUAL CULTURE 

53

Hoffman, Eva R. “Pathways of Portability: Islamic and Christian Interchange from the Tenth to the Twelfth Century”, Art History, 24.1 (2001): 17–50. Hoffmann, Konrad, and Florens Deuchler, ed. The Year 1200. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1970. Isidore of Seville. Allegoriae quaedam Scripturae sacrae, ed. Jacques Paul Migne, Patrologia Latina cursus completus, vol. 83. Paris: n.p. 1862. Jaeger, C. Stephen. The Envy of Angels: Cathedral Schools and Social Ideals in Medieval Europe, 950–1200. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998. Kauffmann, C. M. “New Images for Anselm’s Table Talk: An Illustrated Manuscript of the Liber de Similitudinibus”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 74 (2011): 87–119. Kendall, Calvin. Allegory of the Church: Romanesque Portals and Their Verse Inscriptions. Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1998. Kienzle, Beverly. “The Bestiary of Heretics: Imaging Medieval Christian Heresy with Insects and Animals”, in A Communion of Subjects: Animals in Religion, Science, and Ethics, ed. Paul Waldau and Kimberley Patton, 103–116. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006. La très ancienne Vie inédite de S. Samson, premier évèque de Dole en Bretagne, ed. Dom Francois Plaine. Paris: Bray et Retaux, 1887. Le Huërou, Armelle. “La réécriture d’un texte hagiographique au XIIe siècle: la Vita sancti Sansonis, de Baudri de Bourgueil”, Annales de Bretagne et des Pays de l’Ouest, 108/2 (2001): 7–30, online with different pagination: https://abpo.revues.org/1729. Lillich, Meredith Parsons. “The Tric-Trac Window of Le Mans”, The Art Bulletin, 65 (1983): 23–33. Mann, Vivian B. “Samson vs. Hercules: A Carved Cycle of the 12th Century”, Acta, 7 (1980): 1–38. ———. “Mythological Subjects on Northern French Tablemen”, Gesta, 20.1, Essays in Honor of Harry Bober (1981): 161–171. ———. Art and Ceremony in Jewish Life: Essays on the History of Jewish Art. London: Pindar Press, 2005. Margalith, Othniel. “The Legends of Samson/Heracles”, Vetus Testamentum, 37.1 (1987): 63–70. McLachlan, Elizabeth Parker, Malcolm Thurlby, and Charles T. Little. “Romanesque Reassembled in England: A Review”, Gesta, 24.1 (1985): 77–86. Meyer, Jean-Philippe. “Deux sculpteurs du XIIe siècle en Alsace: les Maîtres d’Eschau et d’Andlau”, In Situ, 17 (2011): http://insitu.revues.org/7601. Meyer, Nicole, and Michaël Wyss. “Un jeu de table du XIIe siècle provenant des fouilles de Saint-Denis”, Archéologie médiévale, 19 (1989): 103–113. Mirror of the Medieval World, ed. William D. Wixom. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1999.

54 

C. LÉGLU

Morey, James H. “Peter Comestor, Biblical Paraphrase, and the Medieval Popular Bible”, Speculum, 68 (1993): 6–35. Morton, Rachel. “Ridiculous Monsters: Further Herefordshire School Sculptures Discovered at the Former”, Bell Inn, Alveley, Shropshire: http://www.alveleyhistoricalsociety.com/uploads/2/3/2/3/23232952/the_bell_inn_alveley. pdf. Murray, H. J. R. “The Mediaeval Game of Tables”, Medium Ævum, 10 (1941): 57–69. ———. A History of Board Games Other Than Chess. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952. Noel, William. The Oxford Bible Pictures, from the Walters Art Museum. Lucerne: Facsimile/ Walters Art Museum, 2004. ———. “The First Iconographer of the Morgan Picture Bible”, in Between the Picture and the Word, ed. Colum Hourihane, 109–119. Princeton NJ: Index of Christian Art, 2005. Offenberg, Sara. “Mirroring Samson the Martyr: Reflections of Jewish-Christian Relations in the North French Hebrew Miscellany”, in Jews and Christians in Thirteenth-Century Europe, ed. Elisheva Baumgarten and Judah Galinsky, 203–216. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Olson, Lynette. St Samson of Dol and the Earliest History of Brittany, Cornwall and Wales. Woodbridge: Boydell, 2017. Petrus Comestor, Historia Scholastica, ed. Jacques Paul Migne, Patrologia latina cursus completus, vol. 198. Paris: n.p., 1855. Poème anglo-normand sur l’Ancien Testament, ed. Pierre Nobel, 2 vols. Paris: Champion, 1996. Pousthomis, Bernard. “Moustier-Ventadour – château de Ventadour”, ADLFI. Archéologie de la France – Informations. Limousin, 2013: http://adlfi.revues. org/16108. Pouzet, Jean-Pascal. “Augustinian Canons and Their Insular French Books in Medieval England: Towards an Assessment”, in Language and Culture in Medieval Britain: The French of England, c.1100–c.1500, ed. Jocelyn WoganBrowne, 266–277. Woodbridge: York Medieval Press, 2009. Prosser, Lee. “The Keynsham Hundred: A Study of the Evolution of a North Somerset Estate”, Ph.D. diss., University of Bristol, 1995. Rauer, Christine. Beowulf and the Dragon: Parallels and Analogues. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2000. Risselin-Steenebrugen, Marie. “A propos d’un tissu du haut Moyen Age et du tympan au Samson de la collégiale de Nivelles”, Bulletin de la Commission Royale des monuments et des sites, 10 (1981): 5–19. Sandler, Lucy Freeman. “Worded and Wordless Images: Biblical Narratives in the Psalters of Humphrey of Bohun”, in The Social Life of Illumination: Manuscripts, Images, and Communities in the Late Middle Ages, ed. Joyce

2  VISUAL CULTURE 

55

Coleman, Mark Cruse, and Kathryn A. Smith, 83–120. Turnhout: Brepols, 2013. Sasson, Jack M. “Who Cut Samson’s Hair? (And Other Trifling Issues Raised by Judges 16)”, Prooftexts, 8.3 (1988): 333–339. Schapiro, Meyer. Romanesque Architectural Sculpture: The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures, ed. Linda Seidel. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2006. Sheppard, J. M. “The Twelfth-Century Library and Scriptorium at Buildwas: Assessing the Evidence”, in England in the Twelfth Century, ed. D. Williams, 193–204. Woodbridge: Boydell, 1990. Smalley, Beryl. The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952. Sowerby, Richard. “The Lives of St Samson: Rewriting the Ambitions of an Early Medieval Cult”, Francia, 38 (2011): 1–32. Stern, Henri. “Une mosaïque de pavement romane de Layrac (Lot-et-Garonne)”, Cahiers archéologiques: Fin de l’antiquité et moyen âge , 20 (1970): 81–98. Stewart, Ian J., and Malcolm J. Watkins. “An 11th-Century Bone Tabula Set from Gloucester”, Medieval Archaeology, 28 (1984): 185–190. Stratford, Neil. “Verse tituli and Romanesque Art”, in Romanesque Art and Thought in the Twelfth Century: Essays in Honor of Walter Cahn, ed. Colum Hourihane, 136–153. University Park, PA: Index of Christian Art, Princeton University and Penn State University Press, 2008. Swarzenski, George. “Samson Killing the Lion: A Medieval Bronze Group”, Bulletin of the Museum of Fine Arts, 38 (1940): 67–74. Taylor, Thomas. The Life of St. Samson of Dol. London: SPCK, 1925. Tcherikover, Anat. High Romanesque Sculpture in the Duchy of Aquitaine, c. 1090–1140 (Clarendon Studies in the History of Art). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Thurlby, Malcolm. The Herefordshire School of Romanesque Sculpture, with a History of the Anarchy by Bruce Coplestone-Crow. Hereford: Logaston Press, 1999. Verzar, Christine B. “Text and Image in North Italian Romanesque Sculpture”, in The Lincoln Symposium Papers: The Romanesque Frieze and Its Spectator, ed. Deborah Kahn, 120–140. London: Harvey Miller, 1992. Weitzmann, Kurt. “Samson and Delilah on a Draughtsman”, Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University, 7.2 (1948): 5–9. Whatling, Stuart. “Narrative Art in Northern Europe, c. 1140–1300: A Narratological Re-appraisal”, Courtauld Institute of Art, 2010: http://www. medievalart.org.uk/index.html. Williamson, Paul. Medieval Ivory Carvings: Early Christian to Romanesque. London: V&A Publishing, 2010.

56 

C. LÉGLU

Wilson, Charles. An Enquiry into the Difference of Style Observable in Ancient Glass Paintings, Especially in England. Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1867. Wirth, Karl-August. Pictor in carmine. Ein Handbuch der Typologie aus der Zeit um 1200. Nach Ms 300 des Corpus Christi College in Cambridge. Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 2006. Zarnecki, George. Later English Romanesque Sculpture, 1140–1210. London: Tiranti, 1953.

CHAPTER 3

Verse and Music

Abstract  This chapter examines the treatment of the Samson story in the verse summary known as the Poème anglo-normand sur l’ancien testament. The Poème recasts the story within the generic frame of Old French vernacular romance. It is an adaptation of biblical material that privileges the narrative over the doctrinal elements. Part 2 analyses the Poème’s possible use of Peter Abelard’s planctus. The twelfth-century planctus on Samson inspired the thirteenth-century lyric drama Samson, dux fortissime, which is discussed in the last part of this chapter. Keywords  Verse Bibles Adaptation

· Music · Planctus · Monastic song · Abelard

This chapter brings together three treatments of the story of Samson in verse and music.1 A verse translation-adaptation of the Old Testament (Poème anglo-normand sur l’ancien Testament) has a surprising allusion to the Latin planctus cycle that is attributed to Peter Abelard. It is possible that this planctus for Samson inspired the musical drama Samson, dux fortissime a century later. These three adaptations depict a deeply human Samson, caught between his unfathomable destiny and erotic betrayal by Delilah, the foe who also fulfils Samson’s quest for union with women and with Philistines. They share an exploration of moral interpretation that focuses on Delilah as the ambivalent agent of the hero’s downfall. © The Author(s) 2018 C. Léglu, Samson and Delilah in Medieval Insular French, The New Middle Ages, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90638-6_3

57

58 

C. LÉGLU

The Poème anglo-normand sur l’ancien Testament (hereafter, Poème) is one of several translations of Scripture into Old French verse that were produced in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Jerome stated that Scripture should be translated ad verbum, but these are summaries and paraphrases that privilege the sense.2 Thirty-five copies survive of Herman de Valenciennes’ Li romanz de Dieu et de sa Mere (c. 1190), while a Bible anonyme survives in two copies (c. 1200). Two further complete verse summaries were produced later by Macé de la Charité and Jean Malkaraume.3 These texts do not compete over doctrinal or linguistic authenticity and they are not heretical.4 They are narrative summaries, tributaries of the historicising Historia Scholastica (c. 1170) and the allegorising Aurora (c. 1170–1209).5 Although the Poème survives in far fewer copies than Herman’s poem, it was absorbed into the Bible d’Acre (produced for King Louis IX of France) and a late medieval prose summary (see Chapter 4).6 It reflects the fact that Anglo-Norman regions produced other biblical translations, notably Sanson de Nantuil’s Proverbs (c. 1135–1165) and the book of Judges (see Chapter 1).7 The success of biblical poems is probably proved by the fact that they are criticised in the preface of the prose Book of Judges as ‘bel diter’ (lovely poetry) that distracts their readers from ‘la verite dou cens’ (the truth of the sense).8 The influence of these biblical poems in vernacular and visual culture has often been overlooked, though they shared patrons as well as audiences and drew on shared literary conventions.9 Oral and written genres are sometimes viewed as separate when they could overlap; the same consideration applies to Latin and vernacular expression. While the previous chapter has examined visual materials, this one is dedicated to the relationship between verse and song. Vernacular renderings of a Latin text formed part of the education of the monastic and learned reader. The six surviving Latin poems of Pyramus and Thisbe may have been classroom exercises. They made their way into medieval vernacular romances through verse translations, serious or parodic adaptations, and allusions in tales of star-crossed lovers such as Tristan and Isolde.10 Rachetta has summarised the arguments for and against a similar educational function for Old French verse Bibles.11 Its generic intertextuality makes the Poème an important marker in the development of new ways of receiving and retelling biblical narratives. Nevertheless, four of the manuscripts of the Poème are from a monastic milieu. One is from the Augustinian priory of Llanthony II near Gloucester (Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 36, Nobel’s MS C), one

3  VERSE AND MUSIC 

59

was in a Cistercian house in Tripoli in 1347, one was given to a nunnery in Derby in the fifteenth century (Nobel’s MS E) and a long fragment is thought to have been from Malmesbury Abbey (Malmesbury Parish Church, MS 2, Nobel’s MS M).12 A tiny fragment has been discovered recently, and it seems to be from a thirteenth-century English copy.13 A prose version was made in the fourteenth century, which Nobel has identified as deriving from his MS E (it is discussed in Chapter 4).14 Nobel has concluded that the Poème’s author was a monk or cleric in Post-Conquest England around the year 1200. He sought to teach the laity and in so doing, he used secular literary devices.15 He combines the Vulgate with the Latin version of Josephus (possibly via Comestor).16 Like the Benedictine monk Osbern Pinnock of Gloucester, his text contains ideological biases including anti-Jewish polemic and misogyny.17 The text’s strictly historicising, non-allegorical approach is a feature of the Parisian schools of Saint-Victor and Notre-Dame, and the Poème echoes the method of its near-contemporary, Leonius of Paris.18 A further connection with Parisian intellectual circles is suggested by the Poème’s reference to clerics lamenting Jephthah’s daughter (ll. 4518– 4523). This is the Planctus Virginum Israel, attributed to Peter Abelard (1079–1142). I will return to this intertextual relationship below. In the Poème, Samson does not serve to foretell the life of Christ or the Harrowing of Hell. Instead, this version of his life traces a set of problems that are remarkably close to the analysis proposed by Greenstein. Greenstein reads the story as a riddle and focuses in particular on its multiple inconsistencies and narrative twists. The reader is repeatedly surprised, problems are not resolved as they should be, and the promised military adventures never happen.19 Greenstein concludes that these anomalies should be taken as evidence that the story itself poses a series of problems for the reader to debate. How can a warrior sent by God fight only for himself? Why does his last massacre of Philistines entail his own death? He suggests that ‘in reading the Samson story, one does not know what one thinks one knows’.20 His interpretation of the story is also of one that plays on the oppositions ‘tell/not tell’ and ‘know/not know’.21 Protagonists and the reader are repeatedly confronted with the realisation that being told something is not the same as knowing it. Appearances (real and false) and ingenuity emerge as key factors. In particular, ingenium (engin) is an important thematic element in this part of the Poème. The use of the word is interesting, and it offers an important clue about the translation’s relationship

60 

C. LÉGLU

with courtly romance. Nobel has made a convincing case for the Poème’s close relationship with the chanson de geste. He also notes some echoes of the Roman de toute chevalerie by Thomas, a version of the Life of Alexander the Great. It seems noteworthy too that through its strong interest in semblant and in engin, the Poème carries hints of an intertextual dialogue with courtly romance.22 The Poème treats the successive episodes of the Samson story at uneven length. His annunciation is a long sequence (ll. 4556–4635). The second important segment of text is an extended narrative of Samson’s disastrous wedding to the woman of Timnah, including the riddle of the lion and the honeycomb (ll. 4672–4819). The account of the vengeful Samson’s actions is relatively terse, in that the episodes of the foxes and the miraculous fountain are told without comment (4820–4925).23 There is a similar lack of detail for the episode of the gates of Gaza (ll. 4932–4969). However, the narrator comments that by this point, the Philistines realise that they cannot rely on strength to defeat Samson, and must turn to engin: Filisteu se tenent pur enginnez Quant se parceivent qi’il fu eschapez: Ore quergent engin pur Samson tuer, Trestote lur force ne lur avera mester! (E, ll. 4970–4973)24

(The Philistines think they have been tricked when they notice that he has escaped. Then they seek out a trick to kill Samson, as all their strength will be of no use to them!) The loaded term of engin acts allows the text’s emphatic and detailed transition to the Delilah episode. She is introduced into the poem as a significant character, who is recruited to destroy him and who desires his death. The text focuses on this aspect of her relationship with him: ‘par tant l’ad enginé’ (she tricked him so much) (line 5019). In the final scene of his life, the palace of the Philistines is held together by a single great pillar, ‘par engin’ (line 5171). When Samson pulls down the pillars, he also destroys his enemies, including Delilah, within a structure that is predicated on engin. Continuity is maintained in this last section by adding that Delilah, ‘Samson’s wife’, dies too (line 5202). Samson’s burial is omitted. In the Poème, engin is the hallmark of Eve: ‘Engin de femme nus ad trestoz trahi:/ Gard sei, seignurs, chescun, pur deu vus pri’. (A woman’s

3  VERSE AND MUSIC 

61

cunning betrayed us first. Beware, my lords, each one of you, for the love of God) (ll. 174–175). The Old French noun engin derives from the Latin ingenium. It designates cleverness but it also has negative connotations of cunning and trickery, artifice and fraud. Hanning’s and Adams’s influential studies established engin as an important concept in courtly romances from the same insular, late twelfth-century literary milieu as the Poème.25 A more recent reading of the insular romance Floire et Blancheflor also notes its stress on engin.26 Hanning suggests that Hue de Rotelande’s romance Ipomedon, which was written for an audience in Herefordshire around 1180–1185, explores the limitations of discernment in a society that values appearances over reality. The hero Ipomedon constructs a wholly illusory image for himself as the Queen’s lover (‘le dru la reine’) in a court that for equally partial reasons has dubbed him ‘le bel malveis’ (the handsome wicked one).27 Engin is a skillset that can complement or supplant physical strength: ‘la vault engin ou force falt’ (engin succeeds where strength fails).28 It is the weapon of the weak, particularly used by women, a good weapon to use against a strong man. A thematic focus on engin connects with the importance in the Poème’s rendering of the story in terms of riddles and mysteries. The hero’s annunciation places semblance (appearance) at the heart of his life story and foreshadows the blindness that will mark his last days. The first riddle concerning Samson in the Poème is Samson himself. His mother receives the visit of an angel after she prays to have a son: ‘L’angele bel lui apareit/ En la semblance d’un hom u ele esteit’ (The handsome angel appeared to her in the guise of a man, there where she stood, ll. 4570– 4571). He foretells the birth of an exceptional son and gives her instructions concerning his hair and diet (ll. 4576–4587). Her husband rejects her words: Li ber s’en gabe quant il oi la parole, E ben dist a sa femme qu’ele esteit fole, Il la mescreit, si que de l’angle deu Qu’il seit sun dru u aucun fol Ebreu. (ll. 4594–4597)

(The nobleman scoffs when he hears the words, and he tells his wife that she is mad. He disbelieves her, and he thinks that the angel of God must be either her lover or some foolish Hebrew.)

62 

C. LÉGLU

The adjective fol may refer to either foolishness or insanity, either that of the mother or that of her possible lover. Folie also connotes sexual misconduct. Therefore, Manoah believes that his wife may be either insane, unfaithful or foolish when she reports her encounter with the stranger. In Manoah’s understanding, the mysterious stranger who spoke to his wife is simultaneously acceptable (a Hebrew) and unacceptable (either a lover or a fool). His use of the term dru introduces the vocabulary of courtly love that will thereafter cluster around Samson’s emotional life. The wife prays for the angel to return and to repeat his exact words to her in the presence of Manoah. She hopes that this will remove the accusation of folie (line 4607). The re-enacted scene is shorter than in the Vulgate. The angel’s words are reduced to three short lines that fail to convince Manoah, who decides to determine the truth by performing a sacrifice (ll. 4598–4615). Preferring a ritual act, Manoah affirms that he does not believe his wife’s words, the stranger’s words or indeed any words at all. In the Vulgate, the angel commands Manoah to make a burnt sacrifice and refuses to reveal his ‘wonderful’ name. He flies up to Heaven on the flames (Judges 13:15–21). In the Poème, the angel also resolves the matter of Manoah’s doubts by flying away, but the ritual is downplayed: Il ad fet a deu son sacrefise al seir Pur saver mun de l’angele sAngel’il fu veir. Veant la dame e veant Manué L’angele s’en part, si est el cel munté. (ll. 4616–4619)

(He made his sacrifice that evening, in order to know if the angel were real. In sight of the lady and in sight of Manoah the angel went away, he went up into the sky.) The angel’s action is designed to be seen by both man and wife, and the sacrifice is a mere pretext for it. Manoah is convinced by seeing a man fly, the one thing that angels can do but humans cannot, in preference to names, explanations or indeed ritual actions. Samson’s annunciation is marked by his father’s reluctance to trust appearances and words. Gaps between appearance, words and facts go on to mark Samson’s life. Samson’s actions are hardly ever ascribed to his divine mission. When he is shorn, the sacred strength is simply stripped away: ‘Il se trovat esnué de vertu / E de la force dunt il ert einz vestu’

3  VERSE AND MUSIC 

63

(He found himself stripped of the strength and of the bodily power with which he had been dressed) (ll. 5140–5141). This Samson only wore the appearance of invincibility. We are returned to the problems posed by his annunciation. An angel might be no more than a man in disguise, or (worse) either a lover or a fool. A hero defined only by his hair might well be no hero at all. He might also be either a lover or a fool or both. Samson’s failed marriage to a woman of Timnah foregrounds this problem. The contrast between ‘knowing’ and ‘seeing’ plays a crucial role: A l’enveiusure survint une meschine Od ses compaignes e od ses veisines. Samson esgarda mult la damoisele, Si vit q’ele esteit a demesure bele: Il la coveitez, si l’aimez mult de quer, Prendre la volt a femme e a muiller. (ms. E, ll. 4644–4649)

(On the town’s outskirts there came a girl with her women companions and neighbours. Samson gazed at the damsel, he saw that she was lovely beyond measure. He coveted her, indeed he loved her with all his heart. He wanted to take her as woman and wife.) The range of vocabulary establishes a courtly Samson. The simple meschine (girl) becomes a damoisele as Samson gazes at her. His perception of her is that she is immoderately beautiful (a demesure). His emotion is heartfelt love; his aim is to marry her. Samson’s love is derived from sight, and his gaze is courtly. However, there are a number of inconsistencies in that love, and they are expressed through his repeated failures to speak. When Samson sets off with his parents to open the marriage negotiations for the woman of Timnah, he kills a lion in secret, as if on a whim, for the Poème omits divine inspiration: A ço qu’il passent les pleines e les boscages, De la forest vint un leun sauvage, Vers els se tret, ferement fet semblant Qu’il seit venu pur devorer l’enfant. Samson l’esgarde, si se tret arere Fors del chemin qu’il ne voist sun père. Entre ses poinz occist le leun, Trestut sanz arme e sanz compaignun, Puis s’en tornat corant tantost cum il pot Tresqu’a sun pere, mes ne li dit un mot. (ms. E, ll. 4676–4685)

64 

C. LÉGLU

(As they crossed the plains and the woodlands, there came a savage lion from the forest. It headed in their direction, it acted fiercely as if it had come to eat the boy. Samson looked at it, he drew back away from the path so his father would not see him. He killed the lion with his fists, with no weapons and unaccompanied. Then he ran back to his father as fast as he could, but he did not say a word.) He tears the lion ‘as he would have torn a kid in pieces’, echoing Manoah’s burned sacrifice of a kid on the orders of the angel (Judges 14:6). Samson kills the lion because he interprets its semblant (appearance) as a sign that it intends to devour him. He acts alone, ‘sanz compaignun’ (with no comrade), on the strength of what his eyes saw and his mind concluded about the lion. This echoes the moment when he fell in love first sight with the woman. The lion does not actually attack the hero. It only gives the semblance that it intends to eat him. Has Samson made the right decision on the basis of what he has seen? He avoids being seen by Manoah (line 4681). The Poème’s stress on his deliberately leaving the path that he shares with his parents is loaded, as straying from the path is what sinners do, especially those who are seduced (subducere is the etymology of seduction).29 The family are travelling to Timnah because Samson has already strayed from his father’s path by deciding to marry a pagan woman. The mother is omitted in this scene in the Poème, making the key element Samson’s relationship with his father. Here, Samson ‘l’enfant’ is not protecting his parents. Rather, he is replicating his betrayal of Manoah’s values, this time in secret. His secrecy is important also when he returns to find the lion’s carcass (Judges 14:8). The narrator insists on this feature: ‘Cele part se tret tut sul, si que nel sout/ Pere ne mere ne parent qu’il out’ (He went there alone, so that no one would know about it, neither his father, nor his mother, nor any relative of his) (ll. 4716–4717). Again, there is no explanation for his secrecy. He gives the honey to his father, his relatives and his bride (the bride receives no honey in the Vulgate, but she is the sole recipient of three honeycombs in Josephus)30: Samson i mangat, si fist sun pere, E une partie dona il a sa mere, E del plus bel dona il a s’amie, Si li portat od altre druerie. (ms. E, ll. 4724–4727)

3  VERSE AND MUSIC 

65

(Samson ate some of it, so did his father. He gave part of it to his mother, and he gave some of the best part to his amie, he carried it to her with other druerie.) The sense is that he brought her the honey along with other tokens of his courtly lover’s relationship with her as dru to her amie. The honey becomes a love token for his new wife, but its significance for his father must be of a different sort. Since the marriage seals Samson’s successful campaign to break with his father’s values, this is a complicated gift for him to bring. We know that Manoah prefers information to be clearly supported by facts, and here he receives and eats a gift of honey with no explanation. Unbeknownst to him the gift carries withheld information of some import. The lion and the honey come to play a destructive factor in this new family unit. The need for secrecy only acquires a meaning once the lion and honey are turned into the ingredients of a riddle that Samson uses against the Philistines. The Poème provides a new version of the riddle scene. In the Vulgate, Samson offers a feast for the wedding and thirty Philistine men are appointed to be his companions. He sets them a riddle (Judges 14:11–12). In the Poème, the stress is on their unwilling presence: Li Filisteu aveient ja grant pour Qu’il ne destruie ne toille lur honur, Ils unt grant creme que Samson nes ocie Einz que les noces seient del tot finie. (ms. E, ll. 4742–4745)

(The Philistines were very frightened that he might destroy or take their lands. they were very afraid that Samson might kill them before the end of the wedding feast.) Thirty men are appointed to keep an eye on Samson ‘Pur lui garder qu’il nes estotie’ (to guard him so he might not make fools of them) (line 4749). The detail is taken from Josephus and expanded.31 Samson does not show his suspicions (a return to semblant): ‘Samson entent mult bien la felonie/ Ne fet semblant, kar il nes doute mie’ (Samson understands the treachery very well, but he makes no show of it, because he is not afraid of them at all) (ll. 4750–4751). Samson’s riddle is a challenge to battle, not a game. Nor is it called engin. The devinaille itself is not the same as in the Vulgate, ‘de comedente exivit cibus et de forte est egressa

66 

C. LÉGLU

dulcedo’, ‘Out of the eater came forth meat,/ And out of the strong came forth sweetness’ (Douay-Rheims, Judges 14:14): Viande eissi de li que tut devore E li durs fist de dulçur engendrure. (ms. E, ll. 4761–4762)

(Meat came from he who devours everything, and the hardness had issue of sweetness.) The meat/food (viande also means ‘food’) issues from a ravenous masculine third person object (he), and the fertile ‘li durs’ refers to a hard thing or man, rather than to a strong man. Manoah has eaten honey a few lines earlier. The lion’s tough bones are the parent of the honey. Once more, the Poème’s version cunningly stresses parent–child relationships and specifically Samson’s relationship with his father. Despite its alteration of the riddle, the Poème omits the important answer (a riddle in itself) that is offered to him by the Philistines, and omits Samson’s enraged counter-riddle (Judges 14:18). The focus is on Samson’s emotional relationship with his wife. Although the Poème preserves the Philistines’ death threats against her and her father, the woman’s attempts to persuade Samson to tell her the key of the riddle are described as engin: ‘En ceste maniere l’enginnat sa muiller’ (In this way, his wife tricked him) (line 4797). She is no longer his amie, now that she is working to undermine Samson’s secrets. She pretends to faint all the better to deceive him (‘E fet tel dol cum ele volsist pasmer/ Pur sun barun deceivre e enginner’, ll. 4792–4793). Samson’s reaction to the Philistines solving the riddle is narrated in terms of his fury about her engin: Quant ot, dunc sout il ben de fi Que par l’engin sa femme fu il trai. Par maltalant parti il de sa amie. (ll. 4810–4812)

(When he heard it, he knew for sure that he had been betrayed by his wife’s engin. Angrily, he left his amie.) The focus is on the wife’s trickery of a strong, fatally silent man. Samson is depicted in this episode as the victim of engin. He may be able to maintain silence and semblant, but ingenuity lies in the hands of the Philistines.

3  VERSE AND MUSIC 

67

The narrative retains this thread at Judges 16, when Samson decides to tell Delilah the secret of his strength. The narrator urges him to avoid the snares posed by women and to remain true to his family, father and religion. He is echoing Manoah’s words when Samson announces that he loves the woman of Timnah. This is unusual for the Poème’s narrator, whose voice is sometimes heard, but never explicitly aligned with a character: Samson se cele, Dalida l’angoisse: Dur est li quers que feme ne desfroisse. A deu! Samson, ne vos lessez trahir! Si tu descovres, tei estovera morir, Ne vus lessez par femme desheriter De la grant force dunt vus estes si fer, Ne suffrez que par femme seez enginné De la grant force que deu vus ad done. (ll. 5094–5101)

(Samson stays silent, Delilah torments him. It is a hard heart that a woman cannot shatter. For God’s sake, Samson, do not let yourself be betrayed! If you uncover [your secret], you will be killed. Do not allow a woman to dispossess you of the great strength of which you are so proud. Do not endure to be tricked by a woman out of the great strength that God gave you.) This identification of narrator and Manoah foregrounds Samson’s filial rebellion. It is all a bit too late: the hero has never rejected women, and he has rebelled several times against his father, family and religion. Delilah’s relationship with Samson reprises the failed marriage at Timnah and his dangerous relationship with the woman in Gaza. The terms of engagement between the two opponents consist of Samson’s desire to remain silent and Delilah’s determination to make him speak the truth. The narrator intervenes as a third party and joins in the dramatic dialogue with exclamations of his own about Adam (traditionally the victim of woman in the shape of Eve) and Joseph (ll. 5110–5113). This narrator has lost control of his protagonist, as if he were now a helpless eyewitness. The narrator’s stress on hair and on unveiling draws further attention to semblance. The relationship with Delilah is a thing of appearances alone, marked by her false seeming and by his folie. The two manuscript traditions of the Poème differ slightly in their treatment of Delilah’s

68 

C. LÉGLU

actions. In MS E, Delilah drives Samson mad with ‘false love’ (‘de fals amur l’afole’, line 5021). Instead, in MS B her seductiveness is only skindeep and she maddens him with semblant (‘par fals semblant l’afole’, line 5021). Delilah in MS E is in line with exegetical tradition: ‘Ele se cuntint come femme de male vie’ (She behaved like a woman of immoral life, line 5017). Delilah in MS B is more concerned with self-control, ‘Ele se content cum femme qui ne s’ublie’ (She behaved like a woman who does not forget herself, line 5017). Thus, the Delilah in MS E is both lustful and deceitful, whereas in B she is primarily a deceiver. Ultimately, in both versions the narrator comments that Samson cannot break out of a woman’s cunning, ‘L’engin de femme l’ad pris en mal laçun’ (a woman’s wiles have caught him in a bad noose) (line 5115). The narrator’s anguished intervention in Samson’s fall is reminiscent of a planctus (lament) for Samson attributed to Peter Abelard (1079– 1142). As the Poème makes an explicit reference to Abelard’s planctus for Jephthah’s daughter, it is likely that this is no accidental resemblance: Icest est la femme, ne vos mentirai pas, Dunt li clerc chantent Ad festas choreas. Deus! Quel dol de demoisele, Qui tant par fu vaillante sage e bele. (ll. 4518–4523)32

(This is the woman, I tell you no lie, about whom clerics sing Ad festam choreas. God! What grief for a young lady, who was so brave, wise and lovely.) The planctus of Israel for Samson (Abissus vere multa) later inspired a lyric drama, Samson dux fortissime. Both pieces invite compassion as well as debate in their respective audiences. Despite being songs composed in Latin and preserved for the most part in monastic environments, they are neither allegorical nor Christological works. Rather, their approach is emotional, affective and compassionate. The Poème’s Samson is a man bound by appearances who lacks insight into his duties and his emotions. His youthful exploits as ‘l’enfant’ earn him the epithet ‘Samson le fort’ (the strong man) (ll. 4702, 4712). When the Philistines ask for him to be surrendered to them, they ask first for ‘Samson le meschin’ (the youth) (line 4775), but after his destructive acts, they ask for ‘Samson li duc’ (the military leader) (line 4863). The epithet marks the highest point of Samson’s career. As he experiences reversals of Fortune, his name alters once more. He dies as a fierce warrior: ‘Trestoz sunt mort,

3  VERSE AND MUSIC 

69

si est Samson li fers’ (They are all dead, and so is Samson the fierce man) (line 5205). The two musical treatments of the story focus on the transformation of ‘le duc’ into ‘li fers’. They also contain an enquiry into how this fallen hero should be interpreted. Samson, Hercules, Oedipus and other figures of biblical and classical legend were the objects of sung monologues in Latin. Hercules’s labours and suffering in love are described in a long poem preserved in several copies including the Carmina Burana (Germany), and a poor-quality English copy, attributed to the Archpoet and to Peter of Blois.33 These songs’ wide dissemination underscores the fact that they formed part of a soundscape that is now only known through fragments. Their presence in monastic song collections points to Gillingham’s conception of ‘a kind of blended morality’ that permitted monasteries to produce (not just tolerate) non-sacred material, and secular audiences to engage creatively with sacred songs.34 The two pieces concerning Samson are associated with religious houses of the geographical cluster in this study: a strong musical culture at Augustinian Llanthony II and the Victorine house at Wigmore, plus the copies of Samson, dux fortissime at Benedictine Reading Abbey and Cistercian Buildwas.35 By contrast, the Planctus Oedipi may be a school resource, as it survives in seven copies of Statius’s Thebaid and in a compilation of Seneca’s tragedies.36 Each of Abelard’s six planctus depicts the emotional crisis of a figure of the Old Testament. The cycle survives without attribution in one thirteenth-century manuscript (BAV MS Reg. Lat. 288). The third in the cycle is the lament for the daughter of Jephthah, cited above. Dolorum solatium, the lament of David for Saul and Jonathan, survives in two copies in isolation from the group, including a cathedral troper. It was probably the easiest piece to reconcile with liturgy, because it connects the grieving David with the penitent David of the Psalms.37 Abelard’s considerable lyric production includes a collection of hymns and sequences for the nuns of the Paraclete.38 Despite their communal and private daily use, the Psalms could also be interpreted as the subjective poems of King David as both hero and penitent.39 An illustrated psalter used outside liturgical contexts (as was usual) could transform David’s life into a medieval romance.40 Thus, historical and mythical figures singing about their suffering can be seen as an extension of the psalter’s penitential voice into territory that could contradict theological norms.41 For example, the monologue from Hell of Oedipus allowed the speaker to express such thoughts as ‘I wish I

70 

C. LÉGLU

could be turned to nothing’ (line 52).42 Like Oedipus, the Samson in the planctus and Samson, dux fortissime is blind, like a prisoner of war or a common criminal.43 These mythical protagonists were overlaid with a real-life aspect to details such as the blinded man with a shaven head, led by a boy, lamenting his misfortune.44 A planctus of this kind could be both pious and pagan. The Poème evokes a planctus performed by religious men (clercs) to the audience Poème itself: the laity. Unlike his hymns, Abelard’s planctus do not fit into liturgy, but they contributed to the development of liturgical drama by straddling the lay-religious divide with their vivid treatment of their biblical source.45 Notably, the planctus for Jephthah’s daughter is known to resemble a dance-song entitled the ‘Lais des Puceles’ (‘Lai of the girls/virgins’).46 It is plausible that the two pieces are connected, because Abelard allegedly composed vernacular songs, and his hymns evoke Jephthah’s daughter.47 Likewise, the Poème devotes forty-seven lines to David’s lament for Jonathan (ll. 8783–8830). Nobel attributes this speech to the chanson de geste but surely Abelard’s Dolorum solatium cannot be far away.48 In terms of the likely audience for the Poème, the Victorine presence in the geographical cluster of the ‘Hereford Sculpture School’ offers a bridge to the poetry emerging in the Parisian schools. Another possible intertextual dialogue is with Jewish poetry, though this can only be suggested, as the only surviving example is the much later Judeo-French ‘Troyes Elegy’ (after 1288), which also draws on the chanson de geste and alludes to dance-song or carole.49 The story of Jephthah comes immediately before that of Samson (Judges 12–13). The first narrative concerns a father’s vow that he refuses to break even to save his own child. The other focuses on a vow that is imposed on a child before he is even conceived. If the Poème’s author knew the planctus of Jephthah’s daughter, it is likely that he also knew the planctus of Samson. Dronke calls the planctus of Israel for Samson ‘the strangest of the six’ in Abelard’s cycle.50 Initially, the collective male voice of Israel mourns for Samson and meditates on the unfathomable nature of God’s judgement. It is presented as an observation, not a complaint: Abissus vere multa iuditia, deus, tua, eo plus formidanda quo magis sunt occulta

3  VERSE AND MUSIC 

71

et quo plus est ad illa quelibet vis infirma! (Part I, st. 1a)

(Truly a great abyss are your judgements, God, to be feared the more, the more they are mysteries, the more that, faced with them, all other strengths are weak!)51 From the outset, the poem explores the mystery of seeing a man in torment and seeking to know what the divine purpose is in that punishment. Its tenor is first fear of the unknowable, and second, the loss of strength that is induced by that fear. Israel is an eyewitness to the ‘strongest of men’, whose birth was heralded by an angel, now fallen, humiliated, in pain and betrayed in love. He has been flung from the ‘games’ and ‘sport’ of war into the harsh labour of captivity, reduced to the level of a beast of burden (Part I, stanzas 1–3b). The audience are invited to share in the compassion of the narrator: ‘cuius cor vel saxeum/ non fleat sic perditum?’ (whose hard is so like stone/ it will not weep that thus he fell?) (Part I, st. 1b). This reflection switches abruptly into a diatribe against Delilah (st. 3c): Quid tu, Dalida, quid ad hec dicis, impia, que fecisti? quenam munera per tanta tibi scelera conquisisti? Nulli gratia per longa manet tempora proditori.

(What do you say, Dalila, what do you say, impious one, to what you have done? What kind of recompense for such deeds of shame did you seek to win? To none is favour shown for long, if she’s a traitor.)52 His hair ‘reborn’, his strength restored and Samson finally brings down the pillars. What follows is not a triumphant hymn but an attack on ‘Woman’ handing every man the cup of Death (‘et mortis poculum / propinat omnibus’, Part II, st. 2b).53 The poem’s closing words warn men against the company of women (Part II, st. 3c). Part II of the planctus strips away typology and allegory in order to depict Samson

72 

C. LÉGLU

as the victim of the war between the sexes. Dronke traces the poem’s ‘incongruous’ misogyny to the Samson of the schools.54 It also appears in the narrator’s intervention in the Poème (cited above, ll. 5094–5101). Dronke reconciles the two parts of the poem by tracing patterns of repetition and mirroring between the secularised ‘man of sorrows’ of Part I and the unnamed Eve of Part II.55 Dronke suggests that the invective is a knowing joke about misogyny, but Ruys, Orlandi and Flynn have noted similar sentiments in Abelard’s serious writings.56 The planctus is of course not written in the voice of Abelard but in that of two fictional speakers: ‘Israel’ (a collective masculine voice) and Samson, who has subjective reasons for disliking women. In the planctus cycle, it follows a lament by a collective feminine voice (the daughters of Israel) for a daughter sacrificed to paternal pride. These thematic contrasts chime with Dronke’s second suggestion, that the incongruous misogyny invites its audience to think critically. If Samson’s death is part of the divine plan, then there are no grounds for attacking Delilah, as she is merely its agent. As it is, the poem withholds any typological or allegorical metanarrative.57 The fractured structure and internal contradictions of the Samson planctus signal that Abelard is using his own dialectical method as a springboard for reflection. The text is full of contradictions because it opens up an intellectual exercise.58 In her study of the uses of medieval dialectic, Brown highlights the contradictory pairing ‘both-and’. Her suggestion has been developed by Kay and by Newman in relation to Old French literature.59 Samson is ‘both’ a hero ‘and’ a fool. ‘Both’ victor ‘and’ victim, his predicted victory against the Philistines comes at the cost of his dignity and his life. His love for women ‘both’ draws him into social life ‘and’ causes him to attacks cities and society’s key bonding rituals such as weddings and feasts. This planctus brings together the clashing interpretations of Judges 13–16 and it does so in a way that highlights their inconsistencies. If the poem were debated via syllogism, Delilah is a woman and she betrays Samson, but it does not follow that all women will betray all men. Should Samson be interpreted as the victim of one woman, of Woman, or of himself? As the poem’s incipit suggests, there is no reason for seeing Samson’s terrible fate as divine punishment. If the speaker is Israel, then that speaker knows that Samson’s preordained mission is to liberate Israel from the Philistines. His death enacts that mission in part. Alternatively, the mission is disrupted by Samson’s desire for Philistine

3  VERSE AND MUSIC 

73

women. Does an idea then emerge that women’s power will always be at odds with masculine authority? The overblown allegory of ‘Woman’ as agent of ‘Death’ cannot conceal Delilah’s role as the agent of contradiction, turning the divine plan into an incomprehensible abyss.60 The planctus opens as a riddle and it ends without an answer, or rather with an overstated non-answer. This is in keeping with Kay’s argument about literary riddles as modes of reflecting on the most threatening ideas, those that propose that the divine plan might not exist at all.61 Other Latin planctus tread similar ground: Oedipus describes himself as a series of paradoxes and incompatible pairings (husband and son, father and brother). He invites compassion while stressing that he is a criminal. Oedipus is ‘both’ victim and villain, ‘and’ he embodies a divine punishment that he cannot fathom.62 The reader is able to measure Oedipus’s clashing statements against the narrative itself, because the poem was preserved in copies of Statius’s Thebaid. Likewise, those who understood the planctus of Samson could read Judges 13–16 for themselves. The same can be said about Samson, dux fortissime, a lyric drama based on the Samson planctus that blends vernacular and religious musical and poetic genres, as its surviving copies are from monastic houses.63 Two are from German-speaking regions, notably the Benedictine Abbey of Weingarten, near Ravensburg, and one is from a Dominican house in Sicily. It was sung at Reading Abbey (British Library Harley MS 978), and Christchurch Priory, Canterbury (lost).64 A ten-line fragment (ll. 1–10) was copied in the late thirteenth century into a miscellany of schoolroom texts and sermons at the Cistercian abbey of Buildwas, Shropshire (Lambeth Palace Library ms. 456, f. 1a).65 Reading Abbey’s musical repertoire was extensive, reflecting the importance of European networks to the development and diffusion of music.66 Samson, dux fortissime opens a collection of Marian sequences. Like them, it is modelled on the secular lai lyrique and the estampie. The Northern French lai lyrique is very similar to the German Leich, meaning that the case for composition in German-speaking regions is as strong as French-speaking regions.67 The compilation in Harley 978 also features goliardic poems, including the Apocalypsis Goliae (ff. 75–78) and the Archpoet’s Confession (ff. 78–78v).68 Samson, dux fortissime poses similar problems of interpretation to the planctus, inasmuch as Delilah’s role is the focal point of the drama. It is composed for three protagonists. Modern editors have labelled ‘Chorus’ the first speaker, who is an onlooker. The second speaker is Samson.

74 

C. LÉGLU

A third voice intervenes twice, as Delilah (the Stuttgart/Weingarten manuscript provides a rubric for this role, ‘Dalida dixit’).69 The piece echoes Abelard’s planctus through its use of a collective eyewitness, as well as its focus on Judges 16 and the ‘Samson of sorrows’ figure identified by Dronke.70 Handschin suggested that the piece has a strongly emotive, non-religious character: ‘the celebration of the feat of a hero’.71 Bourgain suggests instead that this piece depicts Samson’s attempt to recover some glory after his humiliation by a woman.72 Such clashing interpretations reflect the song’s hybridity, both lay and religious. The bystander’s compassion for Samson’s emotional and physical downfall echoes the horrified comments of the Poème’s narrator and of Israel in Abelard’s planctus. Delilah’s fragmentary, mocking interjections develop her portrayal as both unknowable and dangerous. For Stevens, the piece offers a very ‘medieval’ interpretation, ‘both strongly antifeminist and strongly theological in its glorification of the hero’.73 Bourgain suggests that the opening questions directed to Samson by the Chorus are unsympathetic.74 The humiliation visited on Samson by the Chorus’s questions positions the audience as witnesses to a strong man’s downfall. He is blind, and these voices are reaching him in the dark: Samson, dux fortissimeSamson, dux fortissime, victor potentissime, quid facis in carcere, victor omnium? quis te vi vult vincere, vel per sompnium? o victor omnium, victus es, o captor principium, captus es, o raptor civium, raptus es. (ed. Hunt, ll. 1–9)

(Samson, strongest of leaders, most powerful of victors, what are you doing in prison, defeater of all? Whoever could have overcome you, even in your sleep? Oh defeater of all, you have been defeated! Oh capturer of princes, you have been captured! Oh abductor of men, you have been abducted!) The Chorus suggests that Samson’s downfall was due to ‘fraus mulieris’ (line 15) (a woman’s deceit) before it describes his reduction to an object of mockery: ‘Your eyes plucked out, you are blind and you have been

3  VERSE AND MUSIC 

75

made a laughing-stock for your enemies. Your hair shaved off now, you are bald. If it grows back, you will be saved!’ (ll. 16–19). Samson lists his achievements and regrets that they were all undertaken only for a young woman (‘propter te, iuvencula’, line 28). His downfall came when he fell in love with Delilah, an appetising woman in body, a vixen in mind (ll. 68–69). His description of Delilah handing him a cup of wine with a kiss (ll. 70–73) is followed by Delilah’s own voice, as she asks Samson for the source of his strength (ll. 75–82). Delilah’s handing the cup dramatises Abelard’s planctus, in which it is ‘Woman’ that hands the cup (of Death) to ‘Man’. Samson deplores his fate as a drunkard seduced by a harlot into sleeping with his head in her lap (ll. 100–103). Delilah sings in triumph: i et o, i et o, hostem victum teneo! i et o, i et o, calvatum derideo! (ll. 110–113)

(Hurrah, hurrah, I have captured your enemy! Hurrah, hurrah, I am laughing at him, shaven!) The stress placed on Samson’s captors and Delilah’s laughter echoes the mocking tone of the Chorus’s opening series of questions and exclamations. The audience are placed at the outset among the hero’s tormentors from many nations (‘Amorites, Canaanites, Jebusites… Idumeans, Gergesenes, Pharezites,’ ll. 114–117). The audience of this piece is invited more explicitly and more threateningly into the story than in the planctus. Delilah speaks in her own voice, and she expresses the challenge to masculine and divine authority that she represents. Part of the power in this adaptation lies in the very condensed narrative: Delilah asks Samson what is the source of his strength four times in the Vulgate, but in the song, she only asks once. In this treatment, the onlooker is both compassionate and a tormentor, both ‘Israel’ and the Philistines. Samson is defined by his total isolation and complete ­victimhood, in a drama that omits any divine intervention. Given the conventional exegetical association between Judges 16 and Christ’s Passion, it is tempting to view Samson, dux fortissime in typological terms, but this widespread monastic tradition finds no echo here. Instead, the piece focuses on the extrabiblical Samson and Delilah, with suicide the logical outcome of the hero’s emotional distress. Ultimately,

76 

C. LÉGLU

this piece stages a conflict between human protagonists that invites its audience to respond with empathy as well as compassion. The fact that its audience was almost certainly monastic and enclosed adds to its dramatic power: Men who were tonsured and celibate were implicated in the fate of a shaven man, doomed by his transgressive love. The Samson planctus and Samson, dux fortissime indicate the dynamic reception and transmission of a familiar story in a literate, musical context. The Poème drew on musical performances of such works as well as on courtly romance to create a vivid literary treatment of its subject matter. It mixed Latin and vernacular, religious and secular materials to creative and above all affective effect.75 The schools offered as much of a location for such complex emotional narratives as the secular court or the cloister. This is an example of the multi-layered ways in which biblical material moved into the vernacular and into the literary sphere. The next chapter continues this enquiry, turning to the fourteenth century and to the relationship between words and images.

Notes

1.  Parts of this chapter are reproduced with permission from “Giving Voice to Samson and Delilah: Troubadour and Monastic Songs of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries”, in Performing Medieval Text, ed. Ardis Butterfield, Pauline Souleau, and Henry Hope (Oxford: MHRA— Legenda, 2017), 39–52. 2.  Lawrence Venuti, “Genealogies of Translation Theory: Jerome”, Boundary 2, 37.3 (2010): 5–28. 3.  «Li romanz de Dieu et de sa mère» d’Herman de Valenciennes, chanoine et prêtre (XIIe siècle), ed. Ina Spiele (Leiden: Presses universitaires de Leide, 1975). La Bible anonyme du Ms. Paris B.N.f. fr.763, ed. Julia C. Szirmai (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1985). Julia Szirmai, “Un manuscrit redécouvert de la Bible anonyme du XIIIe siècle”, Revue de Linguistique romane, 53 (1989): 435–442. La Bible de Macé de La Charité, ed. J. R. Smeets, 7 vols. (Leiden: Universitaire Pers, 1964–1986). La Bible de Jehan Malkaraume (Ms. Paris, Bibl. Nat. F. Fr. 903) (XIIIe/XIVe siècle), ed. J. R. Smeets, 2 vols. (Assen and Amsterdam: Van Gorcum, 1978). 4.  Margaret Hoogvliet, “The Medieval Vernacular Bible in French as a Flexible Text: Selective and Discontinuous Reading Practices”, Form and Function in the Late Medieval Bible, ed. Eyal Poleg and Laura Light (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 283–306. 5. Hoogvliet, “The Medieval Vernacular Bible”, 288.

3  VERSE AND MUSIC 



















77

6. Poème anglo-normand sur l’Ancien Testament, ed. Pierre Nobel, 2 vols. (Paris: Champion, 1996). 7. Les Paroles Salomun, ed. Tony Hunt (Manchester: ANTS, 2012), 5–9. 8.  Marquis [André] d’Albon, Le Livre des Juges: les cinq textes de la version française faite au XIIe siècle pour les chevaliers du Temple (Lyon: Imprimerie d’Alexandre Rey, 1913), ll. 19–21. 9. J. R. Smeets, “Les cornes de Moïse”, Romania, 114 (1996): 236–237. Kathryn A. Smith, “History, Typology and Homily: The Joseph Cycle in the Queen Mary Psalter”, Gesta, 32 (1993): 147–159. Jean-Marie Fritz, “Conjointures troyennes: Pierre le Mangeur, Chrétien de Troyes et l’auteur du poème de la Genèse”, in Les Écoles de pensée du XIIe siècle et la littérature romane (oc et oïl), ed. Valérie Fasseur and Jean-René Valette (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016), 209. 10. Robert Glendenning, “Pyramus and Thisbe in the Medieval Classroom”, Speculum, 61 (1986): 51–78. Piramus et Tisbé, ed. and trans. Penny Eley, Liverpool Online Series, Critical Editions of French Texts; 5 (Liverpool: University of Liverpool, 2001), 7, 17–18. Mia Münster-Swendsen, “December Liberties: Playing with the Roman Poets in the HighMedieval Schools”, Interfaces, 3 (2016): 90–108. http://riviste.unimi. it/interfaces/article/view/7601/8088. 11.  Maria Teresa Rachetta, “La Bible d’Herman de Valenciennes et le problème du genre littéraire”, Critica del testo, 17 (2014): 56, 63–69. 12. Nobel, Poème, I, 18–20. 13. Discovered by Nicolas Bell. Trinity College, Add. ms. c. 83, f. 3, http:// trin-sites-pub.trin.cam.ac.uk/manuscripts/Add_ms_c_84/manuscript. php?fullpage=1&startingpage=6. My grateful thanks to Irène FabryTehranchi for this reference. 14. Nobel, Poème, I, 21–22. 15. Nobel, Poème, I, 45–50, 85–97. 16. Nobel, Poème, I, 71–83. Franz Blatt, The Latin Josephus, I: Introduction and Text: The Antiquities Books I-V, Acta Jutlandica, Humanistik series 44 (Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1958): 83–84, 91, no. 163. 17. Nobel, Poème, I, 43–50, 120–126. 18. Nobel, Poème, I, 110–116. 19. Edward L. Greenstein, “The Riddle of Samson”, Prooftexts, 1.3 (1981): 240–244. 20. Greenstein, “The Riddle”, 253, quotation at 246. 21. Greenstein, “The Riddle”, 246. 22. Nobel, Poème, I, 148. 23. Nobel, Poème, I, 102. 24. All quotations are from Nobel’s edition of MS E.

78 











C. LÉGLU

25. Tracy Adams, “Crossing Generic Boundaries: The Clever Courtly Lady”, Essays in Medieval Studies, 21.1 (2004): 81–96. Robert W. Hanning, “Engin in Twelfth-Century Romance: An Examination of the Roman d’Enéas and Hue de Rotelande’s Ipomedon”, Yale French Studies, 51 (1974): 83–84. 26.  Patricia Clare Ingham, The Medieval New: Ambivalence in an Age of Innovation (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 80–81. 27. Hanning, “Engin”, 92–98. 28. Hanning, “Engin”, 82. 29.  Subducere, FEW, Vol. 12, 331b. 30.  The Latin Josephus project, Flavius Josephus (Latin trans.), Antiquities, ed. Richard M. Pollard and Josh Timmermann, with the assistance of William Ben Glaeser, “The Latin Josephus Project”, 2013–. https://sites.google. com/site/latinjosephus/. Books 1–8 (Ongoing). Book 5, Chapter VIII, vi. 288. 31. Josephus, book 5, Chapter VIII, vi. 288. 32. See Nobel, Poème, I, 340. 33. Bryan Gillingham, Secular Medieval Latin Song: An Anthology (Ottawa: Institute of Mediaeval Music, 1993), 209–217; John Stevens, The Later Cambridge Songs: An English Song Collection of the Twelfth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 1–6, text and music, 101–108. 34. Bryan Gillingham, The Social Background to Secular Medieval Latin Song (Ottawa: Institute for Mediaeval Music, 1998), 97. 35.  London, Lambeth Palace Library MS 196 (twelth century); Oxford Bodleian Add. A44 (thirteenth century), Gillingham, The Social Background, 98. 36. Birger Munk Olsen, “La réception de Stace au moyen âge”, in Nova de veteribus. Mittel- und Neulateinische Studien für Paul Gerhardt Schmidt, ed. Andreas Bihrer (Munich and Leipzig: K.G. Saur Verlag, 2004), 240; Seneca, Agamemnon, ed. R. J. Tarrant (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 30. 37. Peter Dronke, Poetic Individuality in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), 114–149; Juanita Feros Ruys and John O. Ward, The Repentant Abelard: Family, Gender, and Ethics in Peter Abelard’s Carmen ad Astrolabium and Planctus (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 251–253. Also by Ruys, “Planctus magis quam cantici: The Generic Significance of Abelard’s Planctus”, Plainsong and Medieval Music, 11 (2002): 37–44; Peter Dronke, with Margaret Alexiou, “The Lament of Jephtha’s Daughter”, originally published in 1971, reprinted in Peter Dronke, Intellectuals and Poets in Medieval Europe (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1992), 345–388. Giovanni Orlandi, “On the Text and Interpretation of Abelard’s Planctus”, in Poetry and Philosophy in

3  VERSE AND MUSIC 





79

the Middle Ages: A Festschrift for Peter Dronke, ed. John Marenbon (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 327–342; and Ann Buckley, “Abelard’s planctus and Old French Lais: Melodic Style and Formal Structure”, in The Poetic and Musical Legacy of Heloise and Abelard, ed. Marc Stewart and David Wulstan (Ottawa: Institute of Mediaeval Music, 2003), 49–59. Also by Buckley, “Abelard’s Planctus virginum Israel super filia Iepte Galadite and Li lais des puceles”, in Études de langue et de littérature médiévales offertes à Peter T. Ricketts à l’occasion de son 70ème anniversaire, ed. Ann Buckley and Dominique Billy (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), 545–569. Kearney, “Peter Abelard’s Planctus”, 263. 38. Buckley, cited above. Thomas J. Bell, Peter Abelard after Marriage: The Spiritual Direction of Heloise and Her Nuns Through Liturgical Song (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 2007), xxiii–iv. 39.  Clare L. Costley, “David, Bathsheba, and the Penitential Psalms”, Renaissance Quarterly, 57 (2004): 1235–1277. 40.  Adelaide Bennett, “David’s Written and Pictorial Biography in a Thirteenth-Century French Psalter-Hours”, in Between the Picture and the Word, ed. Colum Hourihane (Princeton NJ; Index of Christian Art, 2005), 124; Frans van Liere, The Medieval Bible: An Introduction (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 211–214. 41. Eileen F. Kearney, “Peter Abelard’s Planctus ‘Dolorum Solatium’: A New Song for David”, in Rethinking Abelard: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Babette Hellemans (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 253–281. 42. Thomas Hahn, “The Medieval Oedipus”, Comparative Literature, 32.3 (1980): 234–237. 43. Irina Metzler, A Social History of Disability in the Middle Ages: Cultural Considerations of Physical Impairment (London: Routledge, 2013), 13–26, 28–29. 44. Irina Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe: Thinking About Physical Impairment During the High Middle Ages, c. 1100–1400 (London: Routledge, 2006), 38–47, 175–176. 45.  David Wulstan, “Liturgical Drama and the ‘School of Abelard’”, Comparative Drama, 42.3 (2008): 347–357. Ruys, The Repentant Abelard, 62–66. Orlandi, “On the Text”, 339–340. 46. Paris BNF fr. 12615, ff. 71r–72r. Text edited in Alfred Jeanroy, Louis Brandin, and Pierre Aubry, Lais et descorts français du XIIIe siècle: texte et musique (Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1975), XXIII, 56–59. Buckley, “Abelard’s planctus and Old French Lais”, 51–53, 57–58. David Wulstan, “Secular Lyrics from Paris and the Paraclete”, in The Poetic and Musical Legacy of Heloise and Abelard, ed. Marc Stewart and David Wulstan (Ottawa: Institute of Mediaeval Music, 2003), 34–48.



80 

C. LÉGLU

47. Buckley, “Abelard’s planctus and Old French Lais”, 51–53, 57–58. Wulstan, “Secular Lyrics”, 46–47. Ruys, The Repentant Abelard, 63. Lois Drewer, “Jephthah and His Daughter in Medieval Art: Ambiguities of Heroism and Sacrifice”, in Insights and Interpretations: Studies in Celebration of the Eighty-Fifth Anniversary of the Index of Christian Art, ed. Colum Hourihane (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), 38, 42–45. 48. Nobel, Poème, I, 139–141. 48.  Kirsten A. Fudeman, “These Things I Will Remember: The Troyes Martyrdom and Collective Memory”, Prooftexts, 29.1 (2009): 6, 21–22 and n. 12. Susan Einbinder, Beautiful Death: Jewish Poetry and Martyrdom in Medieval France (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 126–131. Wendy Pfeffer, “Yet Another Look at the Troyes Elegy”, in ‘Chançon legiere a chanter’: Essays on Old French Literature in Honor of Samuel N. Rosenberg, ed. Karen Fresco and Wendy Pfeffer (Birmingham, AL: Summa, 2007), 76–78. 50. Dronke, Poetic Individuality, 119. Ruys, The Repentant Abelard, 71–75. 51. Dronke, Poetic Individuality, 121. 52. Text and translation, Dronke, Poetic Individuality, 122. 53. Ruys, The Repentant Abelard, 286. 54. Dronke, Poetic Individuality, 123–132. 55. Dronke, Poetic Individuality, 130–135, quotation, 132. 56. Dronke, Poetic Individuality, 136–139. Ruys, The Repentant Abelard, 74–77. Orlandi “On the Text”, 339–340. William Flynn, “Abelard and Rhetoric: Widows and Virgins at the Paraclete”, in Rethinking Abelard: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Babette Hellerman (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 155–186. 57. Dronke, Poetic Individuality, 141–143. 58. Sarah Kay, Courtly Contradictions: The Emergence of the Literary Object in the Twelfth Century (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001); Catherine Brown, Contrary Things: Exegesis, Dialectic, and the Poetics of Didacticism (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998). 59. Brown, Contrary Things, 29–30, discussed by Kay, Courtly Contradictions, 19–25. Newman, Medieval Crossover, 4–5. 60. Kay, Courtly Contraditions, 17–20. Brown, Contrary Things, 29–30. 61. Kay, Courtly Contradictions, 143–178. 62. Hahn, “The Medieval Oedipus”, 232–233. 63.  Samson, dux fortissime was edited as “The Lament of Samson” in The Oxford Book of Medieval Latin Verse, ed. F. J. E. Raby (Oxford: Clarendon, 1959), 428–433. R. W. Hunt published an improved edition in his review of Raby’s book, in Medium Aevum, 28 (1959): 189–194. I quote from Hunt, because of the inaccessibility of the more recent

3  VERSE AND MUSIC 









81

edition by Peter Dronke published in John Stevens, “Samson dux fortissime, an international Latin song”, Plainsong and Medieval Music, 1 (1992): 1–40, and accompanying the CD recording by Sequentia, Visions from the Book, Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, 1996. 64.  Manuscripts: Stuttgart, Württemburgische Landesbibliothek, MS HB 1.95, f. 30r; British Library Harley MS 978, ff. 2–4v; Palermo, Biblioteca Nazionale, MS I. B. 16; Karlsruhe, Badische Landesbibliothek, MS St Georgen 38, all in Stevens, “Samson”, 1, n. 3; 5–6, 9–12, 14. Hans Spanke, “Die Stuttgarter Handschrift H.B. I Ascet. 95”, Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur, 68 (1931): 79–88, item 39 (f. 28), 82. 65. Jennifer M. Sheppard, The Buildwas Books: Book Production, Acquisition and Use at an English Cistercian Monastery, 1165–c. 1400 (Oxford: Oxford Bibliographical Society, 1997), liv, 119–120. 66.  On the music in Harley 978, see Jacques Handschin, “The Summer Canon and Its Background, I”, Musica Disciplina, 3, Fasc. 2/4 (1949): 57–59; Bryan Gillingham, Music in the Cluniac Ecclesia: A Pilot Project (Ottawa: Institute of Medieval Music, 2006), 1–14, 143–44, 168. Reviewed by Lisa Colton, “Reconstructing Cluniac Music”, Early Music, 34 (2006): 675–677; Andrew Taylor, Textual Situations: Three Medieval Manuscripts and Their Readers (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), 5; Helen Deeming, “An English Monastic Miscellany: The Reading Manuscript of Sumer Is Icumen In”, in Manuscripts and Medieval Song: Inscription, Performance, Context, ed. Helen Deeming and Elizabeth Eva Leach (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 140. 67.  Medieval German Literature: A Companion, ed. Marion B. Gibbs and Sidney M. Johnson (New York and London: Routledge, 2000), 238. 68. Gillingham, Music of the Cluny Ecclesia, 167, 186–189. 69. Stevens, “Samson”, 39, note to line 75. 70.  Felix Heinzer, “Samson dux fortissimus [sic] – Löwenbändiger und Weiberknecht vom Dienst?: Funktionen und Wandlungen eines literarischen Motivs im Mittelalter”, Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch, 48 (2008): 25–46. Pascale Bourgain, “La Honte du héros”, in Nova de veteribus: mittel- und neulateinische Studien für Paul Gerhard Schmidt, ed. Andreas Bihrer and Elisabeth Stein (Munich: Saur, 2004), 385–400. 71. Handschin, “The Summer Canon”, 57. 72. Bourgain, “La Honte du héros”, 389. 73. Stevens, “Samson”, 22, 24. 74. Bourgain, “La Honte du héros”, 389. 75.  Elizabeth Aubrey, “Reconsidering ‘High Style’ and ‘Low Style’ in Medieval Song”, Journal of Music Theory, 52 (2008): 75–122.

82 

C. LÉGLU

Bibliography Adams, Tracy. “Crossing Generic Boundaries: The Clever Courtly Lady”, Essays in Medieval Studies, 21.1 (2004): 81–96. Aubrey, Elizabeth. “Reconsidering ‘High Style’ and ‘Low Style’ in Medieval Song”, Journal of Music Theory, 52 (2008): 75–122. Bell, Thomas J. Peter Abelard After Marriage: The Spiritual Direction of Heloise and Her Nuns Through Liturgical Song. Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 2007. Bennett, Adelaide. “David’s Written and Pictorial Biography in a ThirteenthCentury French Psalter-Hours”, in Between the Picture and the Word, ed. Colum Hourihane, 122–140. Princeton NJ: Index of Christian Art, 2005. Blatt, Franz, ed. The Latin Josephus, I: Introduction and Text: The Antiquities Books I–V (Acta Jutlandica, Humanistik Series 44). Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1958. Bourgain, Pascale. “La Honte du héros”, in Nova de veteribus: mittel- und neulateinische Studien für Paul Gerhard Schmidt, ed. Andreas Bihrer and Elisabeth Stein, 385–400. Munich: Saur, 2004. Brown, Catherine. Contrary Things: Exegesis, Dialectic, and the Poetics of Didacticism. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998. Buckley, Ann. “Abelard’s planctus and Old French Lais: Melodic Style and Formal Structure”, in The Poetic and Musical Legacy of Heloise and Abelard, ed. Marc Stewart and David Wulstan, 49–59. Ottawa: Institute of Mediaeval Music, 2003. ———. “Abelard’s Planctus virginum Israel super filia Iepte Galadite and Li lais des puceles”, in Études de langue et de littérature médiévales offertes à Peter T. Ricketts à l’occasion de son 70ème anniversaire, ed. Ann Buckley and Dominique Billy, 545–569. Turnhout: Brepols, 2010. Cheung-Salisbury, Matthew. “The Austinian Performative Utterance and the Thomistic Doctrine of the Sacraments”, in Performing Medieval Text, ed. Ardis Butterfield, Pauline Souleau, and Henry Hope. Oxford: MHRA and Legenda, 2017. Coates, Alan. English Medieval Books: The Reading Abbey Collections from Foundation to Dispersal. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999. Colton, Lisa. “Reconstructing Cluniac Music”, Early Music, 34 (2006): 675–677. Costley, Clare L. “David, Bathsheba, and the Penitential Psalms”, Renaissance Quarterly, 57 (2004): 1235–1277. d’Albon, Marquis [André]. Le Livre des Juges: les cinq textes de la version française faite au XIIe siècle pour les chevaliers du Temple. Lyon: Imprimerie d’Alexandre Rey, 1913.

3  VERSE AND MUSIC 

83

Deeming, Helen. “An English Monastic Miscellany: The Reading Manuscript of Sumer Is Icumen In”, in Manuscripts and Medieval Song: Inscription, Performance, Context, ed. Helen Deeming and Elizabeth Eva Leach, 116– 140. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Drewer, Lois. “Jephthah and His Daughter in Medieval Art: Ambiguities of Heroism and Sacrifice”, in Insights and Interpretations: Studies in Celebration of the Eighty-Fifth Anniversary of the Index of Christian Art, ed. Colum Hourihane, 35–59. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002. Dronke, Peter. Poetic Individuality in the Middle Ages. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970. Dronke, Peter, and Margaret Alexiou, “The Lament of Jephtha’s Daughter”, Reprinted in Peter Dronke, Intellectuals and Poets in Medieval Europe, 345– 388. Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1992. Einbinder, Susan. Beautiful Death: Jewish Poetry and Martyrdom in Medieval France. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009. Flynn, William. “Abelard and Rhetoric: Widows and Virgins at the Paraclete”, in Rethinking Abelard: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Babette Hellerman, 155–186. Leiden: Brill, 2014. Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, ed. Walter v. Wartburg et al., 25 vols. to date. Bonn: Schröeder and Other Places and Publishers, 1922–. Fritz, Jean-Marie. “Conjointures troyennes: Pierre le Mangeur, Chrétien de Troyes et l’auteur du poème de la Genèse”, in Les Écoles de pensée du XIIe siècle et la littérature romane (oc et oïl), ed. Valérie Fasseur and Jean-René Valette, 195–209. Turnhout: Brepols, 2016. Fudeman, Kirsten A. “These Things I Will Remember: The Troyes Martyrdom and Collective Memory”, Prooftexts, 29.1 (2009): 1–30. Gibbs, Marion B., and Sidney M. Johnson, ed. Medieval German Literature: A Companion. New York and London: Routledge, 2000. Gillingham, Bryan. Secular Medieval Latin Song: An Anthology. Ottawa: Institute of Mediaeval Music, 1993. ———. The Social Background to Secular Medieval Latin Song. Ottawa: Institute for Mediaeval Music, 1998. ———. Music in the Cluniac Ecclesia: A Pilot Project. Ottawa: Institute of Medieval Music, 2006. Glendenning, Robert. “Pyramus and Thisbe in the Medieval Classroom”, Speculum, 61 (1986): 51–78. Godman, Peter. The Archpoet and Medieval Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Greenstein, Edward L. “The Riddle of Samson”, Prooftexts, 1.3 (1981): 237–260. Hahn, Thomas. “The Medieval Oedipus”, Comparative Literature, 32.3 (1980): 225–237.

84 

C. LÉGLU

Handschin, Jacques. “The Summer Canon and Its Background, I”, Musica Disciplina, 3.2/4 (1949): 55–59. Hanning, Robert W. “Engin in Twelfth-Century Romance: An Examination of the Roman d’Enéas and Hue de Rotelande’s Ipomedon”, Yale French Studies, 51 (1974): 82–101. Heinzer, Felix. “Samson dux fortissimus – Löwenbändiger und Weiberknecht vom Dienst? Funktionen und Wandlungen eines literarischen Motivs im Mittelalter”, Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch, 48 (2008): 25–46. Herman de Valenciennes.  «Li romanz de Dieu et de sa mère» d’Herman de Valenciennes, chanoine et prêtre (XIIe siècle), ed. Ina Spiele. Leiden: Presses universitaires de Leide, 1975. Hoogvliet, Margaret. “The Medieval Vernacular Bible in French as a Flexible Text: Selective and Discontinuous Reading Practices”, Form and Function in the Late Medieval Bible, ed. Eyal Poleg and Laura Light, 283–306. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Hunt, R. W. Review of Raby, ed., Oxford Book of Medieval Verse: Medium Aevum, 28 (1959): 189–194. Ingham, Patricia Clare. The Medieval New: Ambivalence in an Age of Innovation. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015. Jeanroy, Alfred, Louis Brandin, and Pierre Aubry. Lais et descorts français du XIIIe siècle: texte et musique. Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1975. Kay, Sarah. Courtly Contradictions: The Emergence of the Literary Object in the Twelfth Century. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001. Kearney, Eileen F. “Peter Abelard’s Planctus ‘Dolorum Solatium’: A New Song for David”, in Rethinking Abelard: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Babette Hellemans, 253–281. Leiden: Brill, 2014. Keene, Derek. “Text, Visualization and Politics: London, 1150–1250”, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 18, 6th Series, 69–99. London: Royal Historical Society, 2008. La Bible anonyme du Ms. Paris B.N.f. fr.763, ed. Julia C. Szirmai. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1985. La Bible d’Acre: Genèse et Exode: édition critique, ed. Pierre Nobel. Besançon: Presses universitaires de Franche-Comté, 2006. La Bible de Jehan Malkaraume (Ms. Paris, Bibl. Nat. F. Fr. 903) (XIIIe/XIVe siècle): ed. J. R. Smeets, 2 vols. Assen and Amsterdam: Van Gorcum, 1978. La Bible de Macé de La Charité, ed. J. R. Smeets, 7 vols. Leiden: Universitaire Pers, 1964–1986. Lawton, David. “Englishing the Bible, 1066–1549”, in The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature, ed. David Wallace, 454–482. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Léglu, Catherine. “Giving Voice to Samson and Delilah: Troubadour and Monastic Songs of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries”, in Performing

3  VERSE AND MUSIC 

85

Medieval Text, ed. Ardis Butterfield, Pauline Souleau, and Henry Hope, 39–52. Oxford: MHRA and Legenda, 2017. Les Paroles Salomun, ed. Tony Hunt. Manchester: ANTS, 2012. Metzler, Irina. Disability in Medieval Europe: Thinking About Physical Impairment During the High Middle Ages, c. 1100–1400. London: Routledge, 2006. ———. A Social History of Disability in the Middle Ages: Cultural Considerations of Physical Impairment. London: Routledge, 2013. Munk Olsen, Birger. “La réception de Stace au moyen âge”, in Nova de veteribus. Mittel- und Neulateinische Studien für Paul Gerhardt Schmidt, ed. Andreas Bihrer, 230–246. Munich and Leipzig: K. G. Saur Verlag, 2004. Münster-Swendsen, Mia. “December Liberties: Playing with the Roman Poets in the High-Medieval Schools”, Interfaces, 3 (2016): 90–108. Newman, Barbara. Medieval Crossover: Reading the Secular Against the Sacred (Conway Lectures in Medieval Studies.). Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, 2013. Orlandi, Giovanni. “On the Text and Interpretation of Abelard’s Planctus”, in Poetry and Philosophy in the Middle Ages: A Festschrift for Peter Dronke, ed. John Marenbon, 327–342. Leiden: Brill, 2001. Pfeffer, Wendy. “Yet Another Look at the Troyes Elegy”, in ‘Chançon legiere a chanter’: Essays on Old French Literature in Honor of Samuel N. Rosenberg, ed. Karen Fresco and Wendy Pfeffer, 67–84. Birmingham, AL: Summa, 2007. Piramus et Tisbé, ed. and trans. Penny Eley (Liverpool Online Series, Critical Editions of French Texts; 5). Liverpool: University of Liverpool, 2001. Poème anglo-normand sur l’Ancien Testament, ed. Pierre Nobel, 2 vols. Paris: Champion, 1996. Raby F. J. E., ed. Oxford Book of Medieval Latin Verse. Oxford: Clarendon, 1959. Rachetta, Maria Teresa. “La Bible d’Herman de Valenciennes et le problème du genre littéraire”, Critica del testo, 17 (2014): 53–103. Rushworth, Jessica. “Dante’s Purgatory and Liturgical Performance”, in Performing Medieval Text, ed. Ardis Butterfield, Pauline Souleau, and Henry Hope. Oxford: MHRA and Legenda, 2017. Ruys, Juanita Feros. “Planctus magis quam cantici: The generic significance of Abelard’s Planctus”, Plainsong and Medieval Music, 11 (2002): 37–44. Ruys, Juanita Feros, and John O. Ward. The Repentant Abelard: Family, Gender, and Ethics in Peter Abelard’s Carmen ad Astrolabium and Planctus. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Seneca, Agamemnon, ed. R. J. Tarrant. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Sequentia, Visions from the Book, Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, 1996.

86 

C. LÉGLU

Sheppard, Jennifer M. The Buildwas Books: Book Production, Acquisition and Use at an English Cistercian Monastery, 1165–c. 1400. Oxford: Oxford Bibliographical Society, 1997. Smeets, J. R. “Les cornes de Moïse”, Romania, 114 (1996): 235–246. Smith, Kathryn A. “History, Typology and Homily: The Joseph Cycle in the Queen Mary Psalter”, Gesta, 32 (1993): 147–159. Spanke, Hans. “Die Stuttgarter Handschrift H.B. I Ascet. 95”, Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur, 68 (1931): 79–88. Stevens, John. “Samson dux fortissime, an International Latin Song”, Plainsong and Medieval Music, 1 (1992): 1–40. ———. “Sumer Is Icumen In: A Neglected Context”, Expedition nach dem Wahrheit: Poems, Essays, and Papers in Honour of Theo Stemmler, ed. Stefan Horlacher, Theo Stemmler, and Marion Islinger, 307–347. Heidelberg: Winter, 1996. ———. The Later Cambridge Songs: An English Song Collection of the Twelfth Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Szirmai, Julia. “Un manuscrit redécouvert de la Bible anonyme du XIIIe siècle”, Revue de Linguistique romane, 53 (1989): 435–42. Taylor, Andrew. Textual Situations: Three Medieval Manuscripts and Their Readers. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002. The Latin Josephus project, Flavius Josephus (Latin trans.), Antiquities, ed. Richard M. Pollard and Josh Timmermann, with the assistance of William Ben Glaeser, “The Latin Josephus Project”, 2013–. https://sites.google. com/site/latinjosephus/. Un fragment de la Genèse en vers: fin XIIIe - début XIVe siècle, ed. Julia Szirmai. Geneva: Droz, 2005. Van Liere, Frans. The Medieval Bible: An Introduction. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Venuti, Lawrence. “Genealogies of Translation Theory: Jerome”, Boundary 2, 37.3 (2010): 5–28. Wulstan, David. “Secular Lyrics from Paris and the Paraclete”, in The Poetic and Musical Legacy of Heloise and Abelard, ed. Marc Stewart and David Wulstan, 34–48. Ottawa: Institute of Mediaeval Music, 2003. ———. “Liturgical Drama and the ‘School of Abelard’”, Comparative Drama, 42.3 (2008): 347–357.

CHAPTER 4

Prose and Image

Abstract  This chapter compares the different treatments of the story of Samson in three prose translations of the fourteenth century: an image cycle with rubrics in French produced for a royal owner, the Bible anglo-normande, and a summary translation that derives from the twelfth-century Poème. The images are a series of translations, adaptations and mistranslations. The last section examines the case made by Richard Ingham for viewing monastic schools as key players in the transmission of Anglo-Norman French until the Black Death. Keywords  Prose Bibles · Psalters · Marginalia · Late medieval culture Mistranslation · Code-switching · Vernacular literacy This concluding chapter moves into the fourteenth century. It maintains the geographical focus on Southern England, but it includes the royal court, by comparing three prose French Bibles with two painted Samson cycles in royal household books.1 The use of French was beginning to decline in England, and although this loss was gradual, these translations also functioned as teaching tools for the vernacular.2 After the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), the emphasis on providing the laity with religious instruction in the vernacular impelled the production of translations and digests. In terms of Anglo-Norman French, constitutions issued by bishops supported the dissemination of accessible manuals for lay devotion, confession and penance.3 This may explain © The Author(s) 2018 C. Léglu, Samson and Delilah in Medieval Insular French, The New Middle Ages, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90638-6_4

87

88 

C. LÉGLU

why manuscripts of the Poème were associated with the grammar schools linked to the house of Augustinian canons at Llanthony II, and the Benedictine abbey at Malmesbury, and why a word-for-word prose version of the Old Testament, studied below, belonged to Reading Abbey. Monastic houses interacted closely with the laity, because Benedictine monks were priested, and Augustinian canons preached and exercised the cure of souls in local churches; they also lent books to parish priests.4 The Bible was still experienced primarily through indirect contact in liturgies or as an object in ritual and art, but lay literacy had developed extensively, especially in the vernacular. Booksellers supplied the universities of Paris and Bologna with copies of the Vulgate text in one volume, known as the pandect.5 This Paris Bible included new chapter divisions of the Vulgate.6 Nobel has noted that translated prose Bibles adopted this innovation quite swiftly.7 Nevertheless, Bible ownership remained relatively limited. The development of lay literacy did not necessarily make biblical narratives easier to access, and it certainly did not simplify their illustrations. This chapter looks at the ‘Queen Mary Psalter’, produced in the second decade of the fourteenth century either for King Edward II of England (1284–1327) or more likely his wife, Isabella of France (1295–1358) (British Library Royal MS 2 B VII).8 It argues that the Samson cycle in this psalter contains inaccuracies that cannot be traced to three of the translated Bibles of its time, and that do not reflect the Latin commentary tradition. Comparing the visual cycle with these prose texts sheds light on the methods and failings of those who vernacularised the Vulgate. By the early fourteenth century, three quite different versions in French of the story of Samson were available. A copy was made around 1320 of the French prose Bible prose now known as the Bible du XIIIe siècle, from a continental exemplar.9 This translation inserts typological glosses between blocks of text. The gates of Gaza signify the Harrowing of Hell (Bern, Burgerbibliothek, Cod. 27, f. 164v), and the flesh (Delilah) defeats all men (Samson) (f. 165). Samson’s hair represents the grace of the Holy Spirit, and the Devil mocks those who have lost that grace, just as the Philistines mock the shorn Samson (f. 165). Samson’s massacres of Philistines are first a prefiguration of the Passion and Resurrection, and second, a prefiguration of Christ defeating his oppressors (Bern, f. 165v).10 The Bible du XIIIe siècle was often accompanied by a translation of Peter Comestor’s Historia Scholastica by Guyart des

4  PROSE AND IMAGE 

89

Moulins, the Miroir Historial (1297).11 This heavily mediated text is now known as the Bible Historiale completée.12 It became a standard support for copies of the Vulgate.13 This massive, authoritative book must be set against two other translations that were produced in England between 1300 and 1350. One is a word-for-word prose translation of the Bible called the Bible anglo­normande.14 Substantial parts of it survive in two manuscripts: Paris BNF Français 1 and London BL Royal MS 1 C III (Old Testament only).15 I have discussed this book at length elsewhere.16 A further version of Judges 13–16 is in a prose compilation known as the Bible abrégée, derived from the Poème. This ‘Bible en franceis’ (Bible abrégée is its modern title) runs from Genesis to Revelation, interrupting the Old Testament with the Gospel of Nicodemus, which contains summarised parts of the New Testament as well as the Harrowing of Hell. Its structure is clearly typological but it does not inform the reader that this is a restructured, interpreted text.17 Four copies survive: BL Add. MS 54325 (England, c. 1350), Paris BNF français 9562 (England, after 1350), and two fifteenth-century copies: Paris BNF français 6260, and Boston, Public Library De Ricci 76.18 The Bible anglo-normande and the Bible abrégée offer no glosses or explicit guides for their readers. They have a radically different approach to rendering the Vulgate, but there is no sign that they had different audiences; the same applies to the readers of the Bible du XIIIe siècle. Moreover, the Bible abrégée contains part of the Bible anglo-normande. It seems that a restructured summary was not incompatible with a wordfor-word rendering or a glossed translation-adaptation.19 The Bible anglo-normande survives as a very large illuminated manuscript owned by the John of Welles (d. 1361) and his wife, Maud, daughter of William, lord Ros (Paris, BNF fr. 1).20 The Welles family are also associated with a magnificent Anglo-Norman Apocalypse, bound with the Lumere as lais (BL Royal MS 15 D II, c. 1310). By the late fifteenth century, they owned a significant number of books in French (none of these is the Bible anglo-normande).21 Royal MS 1 C III belonged to Reading Abbey until the 1530s. It is also a sizeable manuscript,22 and given that it contains only the first seventeen books of the Old Testament (Genesis to Tobit), it was probably part of a multi-­volume book. Reading Abbey acquired a large number of manuscripts from private hands in the later Middle Ages, so it cannot be assumed that the Bible anglo-normande was either made in the abbey or commissioned by

90 

C. LÉGLU

it.23 Nobel has compared the two surviving copies of the Bible anglo­normande with an adapted copy produced for King John I of France by the theologian Jean de Sy in 1356. He concludes that the three scribal teams worked from an incomplete or faulty common exemplar.24 Royal MS 1 C III is peppered with English words, and Fr. 1 provides alternative expressions in French. Jean de Sy resolved gaps by consulting the Vulgate. Neither he nor the scribes who worked on these manuscripts used glosses or complementary materials to help them in their work. The English book hand of Royal MS 1 C III is very similar to that of a copy of the Bible abrégée (London British Library Add. MS 54325). It is a smallish but very thick volume (571 folios) of unknown provenance. This similarity implies connected readerships for quite different translations and adaptations. Thus the Bible anglo-normande’s owners account for the three key consumers of vernacular devotional works: secular noble households (possibly women), religious houses and the royal court.25 Not only do these two very different translations address different reading needs, they also anticipate different levels of competence in French, notably in their treatment of abbreviations. Abbreviation implies that a reader was able to read fluently enough to expand the signs correctly. The scribe(s) of Royal 1 C III abbreviate French words often and consistently, but they write Latin and English words in full. Their abbreviations mostly serve to speed up the process of writing, for example, pere and mere are written as pē and mē, and hommes and femmes consistently have a single m topped by an abbreviation sign. One non-­pragmatic abbreviation is when the hands write ‘nostre seigneur’ as nre se (see Fig. 6), thus replicating the Latin practice of abbreviating sacred names (nomina sacra).26 The scribal team of Add. MS 54325 does not use abbreviations to the same extent as for Royal 1 C III. It does not abbreviate ‘nostre seigneur’ either, and it tends to use the common noun deu to designate God. Fewer abbreviations and an absence of tyronian notes also indicate that the scribes anticipated a less fluent readership. That readership could comprise listeners and one fluent reader, and one context for such a translation is what Ian Short has termed ‘collective, perhaps collatio-type, reading’.27 Royal MS 1 C III could be read aloud too, if haltingly, given its gaps and hesitations. Add. MS 54325 provides a rapid summary and it is amenable to oral delivery. A word-for-word translation that used no exegetical or supporting materials would have been unusual for its time, especially in a monastery.

4  PROSE AND IMAGE 

91

Reading Abbey owned a copy of the Vulgate with Peter of Poitiers’s Compendium historiae (MS Oxford Bodl. Lib. MS Auct. D. 4. 10, Coates, no. 64); monks could also read a commentary on the Historia Scholastica (now ff. 1–24 of Cambridge Pembroke College, MS 225, Coates, no. 68).28 The abbey also owned a fragmentary twelfth-­century glossed manuscript of the Book of Judges, other parts of the Old Testament, plus Peter of Poitiers’ Compendium historiae (BL Add MS 54230, Coates, no. 37).29 The ‘Queen Mary Psalter’ provides an interesting insight into the reception and uses of translated Bibles in a royal court. Lay literacy and monastic books could coincide in elite households. The Bible abrégée’s adaptation of the courtly, secular Poème indicates that this verse text was still in circulation around 1300. The annotations on Harley 278 show that Samson, dux fortissime was still performed, and it makes suitable fare for visitors of a royal abbey such as Reading or Canterbury. This makes the eccentric Samson cycle of the ‘Queen Mary Psalter’ all the more interesting, as surely a royal household would have been able to draw on authoritative sources. The psalter opens with a cycle of narrative images of the Old Testament, in the style of ‘picture Bibles’ produced in the same period. The images are supported by rubrics in French prose. Stanton has suggested that this Psalter was made palatable for royal women and children by introducing aspects of courtly literature.30 In this respect, she suggests that the Samson cycle is romance-influenced, unlike the ‘adventure tale’ model that she identifies in other images.31 The Samson cycle is entitled lestorie de Sampson le fort et de Dalida sa femme qe li fit tort (the story of Samson the strong and of Delilah his wife, who wronged him).32 It opens with two sides of text summarising Samson’s annunciation (Judges 13) to his massacre of the Philistines with the jawbone of an ass (Judges 15:15) (ff. 41v–42r). The seventeen images of the cycle are arranged in pairs, with one exception (ff. 42v–46v). In the opening image of the cycle, Manoah and his wife pray for a son who will free him from servitude, and the angel appears to the couple, announcing the birth of a child who shall free them (f. 42v). During his time as a Nazarite, Samson is shorthaired, beardless, often small.33 The story is heavily condensed, because Delilah is the woman of Timnah, whom Samson first sees at a feast (f. 43r). He kills the lion out of excitement at meeting the love of his life, before he asks his father for permission to marry her (f. 43v). These two women were sometimes conflated in exegesis, but not in the Anglo-Norman verse or prose texts

92 

C. LÉGLU

that survive, and of course the lion is not killed at that point in the biblical narrative. However, in Samson, dux fortissime, Samson cries that he dedicated all his adventures to one ‘girl’ alone (line 28), and the only female protagonist in that work is Delilah. The conflation of the woman of Timnah, the woman of Gaza and Delilah appears in a musical drama rather than a devotional text. Samson reclaims his wife (here, Delilah) from her father by offering him a lamb or a kid (f. 45v). This reverses the biblical narrative, where Samson returns to Timnah with a kid only to find that his wife has been married off to another man. There follows the standard image of Samson reclining in Delilah’s lap as the Philistines come to bind and blind him (f. 46r). Finally, a blind, bearded Samson brings down the pillars around a table of oblivious Philistines (plus Delilah), and the rubric provides the eccentric detail that his servant blows a horn outside the building (Fig. 4.1, f. 46v). A boy is blowing a horn in the image. This detail does not occur in Samson, dux fortissime, but it echoes the Poème, where Samson protects the boy who is guiding him from death by telling him to leave the palace: ‘…Et tu, dist il, pur ço que m’as servi,/ Fui del paleis que ne series peri!’ (‘And you’, he said, ‘Because you served me well, flee from the palace, to avoid dying!’) (ll. 5190–5191). The same detail appears, expanded, in the Bible abrégée. The boy runs away ‘a grant effreys’ (with great fear), and Samson does not bring down the pillars until he is sure that the child has left the building: Quant Sampson entendi que lenfaunt ert hors del paleys il posoint le piler per irrour et les murs de paleys creverent et le mortier sen parti que estoit par entre les perres issint que la maison chait sur les philistiens que fors estoient illoeques et les occist trestoutz. Et illeoques perist Sampson et Dalida sa femme et en lour compaignie morrirent dys mil des philistiens. Et en ciele manere soi vengea Sampson de les philistiens quant en aultre manere ne soi peut de eux venger.34

(When Samson heard that the child was out of the palace, he pushed the pillar with anger and the walls of the palace broke, the mortar between the stones separated, so that the house fell on top of the Philistines who were there, and killed them all. In that place died Samson and his wife Delilah, and in their company there died two thousand of the Philistines. In such a manner, he took revenge on the Philistines, because he could not avenge himself in any other way.)

4  PROSE AND IMAGE 

Fig. 4.1  © British Library Board. British Library MS Royal 2 B VII, f. 46v

93

94 

C. LÉGLU

In the ‘Queen Mary Psalter’, a boy is blowing a horn in front of the table. The rubric calls him a vallés, who blows the horn to tell the hero that he has escaped to safety. There is no horn in the terse two lines of the Poème or in the expanded scene in the Bible abrégée, nor is there any information about how Samson knows that the child has left the building. It is a plausible gap-filling addition. The prose text adds credible detail (the blinded man hears that the child is gone) and it focuses on the love, loss and vengefulness of the hero. As in the Psalter, Delilah is one of the dead (Poème, ll. 5202–5203). This part of the Samson cycle diverges from the Vulgate and Josephus. I have suggested above that it reflects changes made in prior musical and textual adaptations. Meanwhile, Smith has suggested that the ‘Queen Mary Psalter’ includes subtle visual allusions to crises affecting the early years of the reign of Edward II, including his tensions with Isabella.35 She also traced divergent elements in the Joseph cycle to the verse Bibles by Herman de Valenciennes and Geffroi de Paris.36 It may be that the psalter’s illustrations reflect a vernacular, essentially secular reception of the biblical stories, and that they also carry subliminal political or domestic comments. Another psalter associated with Isabella of France (the ‘Isabella Psalter’) contains a long, accurate Samson cycle in bas-de-page illustrations.37 Isabella was identified as the crowned queen kneeling in prayer between the shields of France and England (Fig. 4.2, f. 94), in the traditional location for a patron or donor, the incipit of Psalm 119. She sits with the French text and faces the corresponding initial letter A of the Latin text, which contains an illustration of Samson’s shearing by a crowned Delilah (f. 93v) (Fig. 4.3).38 Beneath the shearing scene, in the lower margin, three Philistines are blinding Samson. One of the Philistines points upwards to the initial that depicts Delilah, and holds his other arm out to point in the direction of Isabella. Overleaf, placed over the shadow of the queen (just visible in transparency), Delilah is kneeling in prayer in front of a hairy demon while Samson destroys the temple around her (Fig. 4.4, f. 94v). Delilah’s posture echoes that of the queen, but the royal shields have been replaced by two fragile pillars. Strangely, Samson has kept his eyes. The disastrous reign of Edward II seems to have been a catalyst for the use of media and genres such as psalters, wall paintings and lyric song as vehicles for propaganda.39 Stanton suggests that the confrontation between the queen and Delilah in the ‘Isabella Psalter’ offers a moral

4  PROSE AND IMAGE 

Fig. 4.2  Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München, Cod. gall. 16, fol. 94

95

96 

C. LÉGLU

Fig. 4.3  Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München, Cod. gall. 16, fol. 93v

4  PROSE AND IMAGE 

Fig. 4.4  Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München, Cod. gall. 16, fol. 95v

97

98 

C. LÉGLU

warning to her, and possibly hints at Samson as a ruler who has failed to live up to his mission.40 However, the mocking male torturer who indicates the relationship between Isabella and the crowned Delilah points to something more threatening than a moral warning. Still less gentle is the artist’s hand that depicted her as the victim of Samson’s revenge, her initial ‘A’ tugged apart by his arms as she prays to a hirsute idol. The shield of France is replaced by Dagon, the deity for whose sake the Philistine princes force Samson to dance. The ‘Isabella Psalter’ was produced in England, possibly in the archdiocese of York in an Augustinian house, and its litanies include Anglo-Saxon saints associated with Ely and Cambridgeshire (Etheldreda, Seaxburh, Witburga, Wandregisel and Neot).41 The ‘Queen Mary Psalter’ contains several of the same Anglo-Saxon saints in its litanies and its calendar (ff. 77, 314v–317).42 There is clearly a connection between the two books, and it is likely that Isabella owned both, but this personal connection makes it all the more incredible that they contained threatening messages for the queen. Nevertheless, similar coded content has been identified in an Apocalypse manuscript owned by her.43 A key to the association of the Samson cycle images with Isabella may lie with the text that they accompany. Psalm 119 opens the sequence of Gradual Psalms, fifteen steps that take the speaker from desolate suffering to ‘standing in the house of God’ (Ps. 133). It was conventional to depict the book’s owner at prayer at this point, but Ps. 119–133 also marked the ascent of the young Virgin Mary after her Presentation at the Temple.44 Thus, the insertion of this dramatic crisis in the story of Samson may well be fortuitous (as the cycle of Old Testament narratives has reached this point), but it is incongruous to find Delilah’s treachery in a space normally reserved for the spiritual ascent of the young Virgin. Delilah’s and Isabella’s images are placed next to the following words: [historiated initial A: Delila shears Samson] Ad Dominum cum tribularer clamavi, et exaudivit me. Domine, libera animam meam a labiis iniquis et a lingua dolosa. Quid detur tibi et quid adponatur tibi ad linguam dolosam Sagittae potentis acutae, cum carbonibus desolatoriis. Heu mihi, quia incolatus meus prolongatus est! habitavi cum habitantibus Cedar; Multum incola fuit anima mea. Cum his qui oderunt pacem eram pacificus; cum loquebar illis, impugnabant me gratis.

4  PROSE AND IMAGE 

99

(Douay-Reims translation: In my trouble I cried to the Lord: and he heard me. O Lord, deliver my soul from wicked lips, and a deceitful tongue. What shall be given to thee, or what shall be added to thee, to a deceitful tongue. The sharp arrows of the mighty, with coals that lay waste. Woe is me, that my sojourning is prolonged! I have dwelt with the inhabitants of cedar: my soul hath long been a sojourner. With them that hate peace I was peaceable: when I spoke to them they fought against me without cause.) French text (Munich, BSB Cod. gall. 16, ff. 93v and 94, transcription mine): [Historiated initial A: Isabella kneels in prayer between the shields of England and France]: Al seignur cum ieo esteia a triblez cria e il oit mei. Sire deliure ma aneme de leures felunesses et de tricheresse langue. Quel chose te serat donee od quel chose te serat aposee, a tricheresse langue? [f. 95r] Les setes del poant sunt agues, od les carbuns descunfortables./ Guai a mei mis cultiuer es; esloigniez ieo habitai od les habitanz de icel liu mult fu cultiueresse la mei aneme. Od icels qui hairent pais esteie paisible; com ieo parloue a els cumbateient od mei en parduns.

(To the Lord when I was in trouble I cried, and he heard me. Lord, deliver my soul from wicked lips and a treacherous tongue. What thing shall be given to you, or what thing shall be added, to a treacherous tongue? The arrows of the powerful are sharp, with comfortless coals. Woe is me, for I dwell far away! I lived with the inhabitants of this place. My soul has dwelled here a long time. With those who hated peace I was peaceable; when I spoke to them they fought against me gratuitously.) The text in French is similar to that preserved in the earliest surviving copy of this translation (c. 1130–1150), edited by Ian Short.45 A nostre Segnor, cum je esteie travaillié, criai; e il exoït mei. Sire, delivre la meie aneme de levres felunesses e de langue tricheruse. Que seit duné a tei, u que seit aposed a tei, a langue tricherresse? Les saiettes del poant aguës, ot carbuns desgastëurs./ Guai a mei! kar li miens cultivemenz purluigniez est; je habitai ot les habitanz Cedar; mult cultiveresse fud la meie aneme. Ot icez chi haïrent pais esteie paisibles; cum je parlowe a els, cumbateient mei en parduns.

100 

C. LÉGLU

Over the long and no doubt complicated dissemination of this translation, the burning coals have become comfortless rather than destructive, and the land of Cedar has become ‘this place’. Nevertheless, this fourteenth-century version preserves idiosyncrasies from the Oxford Psalter, notably cultivemenz and cultiveresse, rendering Latin incolatus (dwelling) erroneously in its literal sense of cultivating the land.46 In the ‘Isabella Psalter’, the familiar story of Samson’s fall at the hands of Delilah accompanies the queen’s image, framing a bleak lament about exile in a land torn by war, treachery and lies. Interpretations must remain speculative, and what seems most clear from the discussion above is that the eccentric treatment of the Samson cycle relies on the reader’s familiarity with it. It is highly unlikely that the scribes or artist of the ‘Queen Mary Psalter’ did not know what happened in Judges 13–16. Rather, they have significantly altered the narrative, and the omissions, conflations and incongruities are blatant. It may be too easy to speculate about the use of political rebuses in Isabella’s circle. Given the use of French in the rubrics of the ‘Queen Mary Psalter’, the key may lie in the translated Bibles that were then in circulation (as Smith has noted). I suggested above that Samson, dux fortissime, and the Poème/Bible abrégée may have influenced the eccentricities of the ‘Queen Mary Psalter’. There is a further possibility, which is that the French translations were not as comfortable with their source as we might assume. The Samson story in Royal MS 1 C III is translated in full, wordfor-word, without glosses.47 There are fewer gaps and there is less code-switching than in other parts of this manuscript. The one exception is the moment when Samson smites the Philistines ‘hip and thigh with a great slaughter’ and goes to live in a stone cavern at Ethan: Vulgate, Judges 15:848: Percussitque eos ingenti plaga ita ut stupentes suram femori inponerent et descendens habitavit in spelunca petrae Aetham.

Royal MS 1 C III (f. 175v, col. 1): et cil les feri en grant plaie issint que cil esmerueillanz mistrent la seure chalff of ye legge sur le musser. Et cil descendant habita en une cauerne de perre a Ethan.

The translator was defeated by a tricky sentence, which the DouayRheims translation renders with the same choice of words: ‘in

4  PROSE AND IMAGE 

101

astonishment they laid the calf of the leg upon the thigh’ (Judges 15:8). The word musser must approximate to the noun ‘thigh’ although it looks like the infinitive of musser or muscer, to conceal or hide. This was not an easy verse. A glossed Bible associated with Reading Abbey attempts to resolve the obscurity of the language too. Explaining ‘percussit eos ingenti plaga…’, it suggests possible positions for the parts of the leg.49 Otherwise, the only words underlined are the Latin maxilla (see below) and uitula (f. 175r, col. 1). Here, the uncertainty makes sense because the passage is as obscure as that repositioning of the Philistines’ limbs. Samson’s words are a riddle: ‘Si non arassetis in vitula mea, non invenissetis propositionem meam’ (If you had not ploughed with my heifer, you had not found out my riddle) (Judges 14:18). His words are usually understood as an accusation of adultery or rape: Samson’s Timnite wife is the ‘heifer’ that he accuses the thirty Philistine men of using for their ‘ploughing’. The translation renders the noun as veale, feminine of the Anglo-Norman noun veel (calf): ‘ssi uos ne ossez aree en ma ueale uitula uos ne ussez trouee ma proposicion’ (f. 175v, col. 1). The translator has not used the common Middle English heyfre (heifer), so the Latin is there to support the French noun.50 There are only two gaps, and one betrays a moment of uncertainty. The Philistines gather in a temple or palace to celebrate their deity, Dagon. The scribe left a blank: ‘les princes de philistiens assemblerent en un […] / qil sacrifieroient honorables sacrifices / a lour dieu Dagon’. (f. 176v, col. 2) (the princes of the Philistines gathered in a … so that they might sacrifice honourable sacrifices to their god, Dagon). On this occasion, the gap is understandable, because the Vulgate appears at first glance to have left out a noun: ‘Principes Philisthinorum convenerunt in unum ut immolarent hostias magnificas Dagon deo suo’. The scribe was working word-for-word at this point and did not turn to any commentary or alternative text for support. The uncertainty is about grammar and syntax, not lexis. The Latin noun maxilla appears as an underlined word next to jowe when Samson throws the ass’s jawbone down after killing the Philistines (f. 175v, col. 1). At its first appearance in this narrative, the lion’s mandible is simply rendered as bouche: ‘Cil veist la caroigne del leon et uoi un esseim des ees estoit en la bouche du leon et un ree de meel (…) il out pris le meel de la bouche du leon’ (f. 174v, col. 1). Had the scribe consulted another vernacular biblical text, they would easily have found jowe for maxilla, from the late twelfth-century Poème (‘Entre les joes

102 

C. LÉGLU

trove il del leuncel’, line 4720), to the Holkham Bible Picture Book (c. 1325): ‘De la joue de un arne le occyit’. The rubrics in the ‘Queen Mary Psalter’ also give the word ‘jowe’ for jawbone.51 The same applies in the Bible abrégée: ‘un essem des ees entre les iowes del leoun’ (London British Library Add. MS 54325). Maxilla has no obvious function as a gloss, unless jowe was less familiar to the scribe than bouche. In continental French, the noun joe was beginning to designate the cheek (it would become the Modern French joue), whereas the English noun jowe for the jawbone (maxilla) only appears as a loanword from French by the late fourteenth century, and remains ‘of uncertain provenance’ for lexicographers.52 If the common exemplar of the Bible anglo-normande was faulty, consulting existing translations does not appear to have been an option. Guyart de Moulins’ Bible historiale rubricates the scene as ‘Comment Sampson occist les hommes de la masille dun ane’.53 The noun masille is clearly a calque on maxilla, possibly a neologism. In any case, the translator of Royal 1 C III did not adopt it. Despite its typological structure, the Bible abrégée was produced without glosses or other supporting books. It uses rubrics to divide up and signpost its text. It does not borrow any of these rubrics from Guyart des Moulins.54 In the Bible historiale, the story of Samson has short rubrics: ‘Comment Sampson occist le lion’, ‘Comment Sampson occist les hommes de la masille dun ane’, ‘Comment Sampson fut deceu’, and ‘de Dalida’. The Bible abrégée’s rubrics are longer, more descriptive, and they foreground emotions rather than actions (Chapters XXII–XLVII): Coment Manue del lignage Dan long temps ert od sa femme et ne peut de lui engendrer dont il ert dolent. (Add. MS 54325, f. 97v)55

(How Manoah of the line of Dan was with his wife a long time and could not have issue from her, which made him sorrowful.) Coment la femme Manue ne voloit seoffrir Sampson son fitz estre tonduz. (Add. MS 54325, f. 99)

(How the wife of Manoah could not accept having her son shorn.) The courtliness of the Poème makes its way into the rubrics. Manoah thinks that his wife is ‘fole’, Samson feels love for ‘s’amie’ (Ch. XXXIII), as he does for Delilah, ‘une dame philistiene’ (Ch. XLI). Samson seems to be a rebel rather than a man with a preordained divine mission:

4  PROSE AND IMAGE 

103

Coment Sampson ama une femme paenesse de la cite de Thama encountre la lei dieu. (Add. MS 54325, f. 99)

(How Samson loved a pagan woman of the city of Timnah against the faith of God.) The Bible abrégée’s typological frame (Genesis–Nicodemus– Apocalypse) reflects extrabiblical, even eschatological material, but it recasts its protagonists’ motivations in affective terms. Modern commentators on the Book of Judges have suggested that this book places God either ‘in the background’ (Niditch) or as a character that ‘slides in and out of the narrative’ (Gunn).56 In the Bible abrégée, God is almost absent after the hero’s annunciation. Samson’s vengeful acts reflect his passionate feelings, and they are not explicitly reconciled with a spiritual metanarrative. Stressing emotional motivation constructs a coherent narrative out of this contradictory text. A similar quest for narrative coherence may underpin the distorted Samson cycle in the ‘Queen Mary Psalter’. Its most blatant inaccuracy is incompatible with both standard exegesis and the surviving vernacular translations. In the Vulgate, when Samson learns that the woman of Timnah has been married off to another man, he takes fearsome revenge (Judges 15:4–5): perrexitque et cepit trecentas vulpes caudasque earum iunxit ad caudas et faces ligavit in medio. quas igne succendens dimisit ut huc illucque discurrerent.

(And he went and caught three hundred foxes, and coupled them tail to tail, and fastened torches between the tails. And setting them on fire he let the foxes go, that they might run about hither and thither.)57 The incendiary foxes destroy the Philistines’ fields, vineyards and produce. In return, the Philistines kill the Timnite woman and her father (15:5–6). In the ‘Queen Mary Psalter’, the animals are not vulpes (foxes) but wolves (Fig. 4.5): E prist tres cents lous. E lieht deus ensemble par les Coues. E myiht entre lur cues vn tisoun de fuu. E en tele gise les enuoyat touz les Tre Centz lovs en la tere des philistiens E hii curreyent par me lour vinies e lour blees e arderent partuht ou il alleyent.58

(And he took three hundred wolves and he tied them together by their tails and put a burning torch between their tails. He sent all three hundred

104 

C. LÉGLU

Fig. 4.5  © British Library Board. British Library MS Royal 2 B VII, fol. 94v

4  PROSE AND IMAGE 

105

wolves like this, into the land of the Philistines. They ran through their vineyards and their wheat and they set fire to everywhere they went.) The rubric of the corresponding image in the psalter reiterates the mistake: Coment Sampson enuoye en la tere de philistine treys centz loues per aiter lour vynies e lour blees de tizounes qe fount liez entre lur coues en despyiht sa femme. (f. 44v)

(How Samson sent into the lands of the Philistines three hundred wolves to destroy their vines and their wheat with burning torches tied between their tails, in contempt of his wife.) Images of this scene survive in many locations: the mosaic pavement of a Roman-era synagogue that was active until the thirteenth century, the windows of Auxerre cathedral, the Morgan Library Picture Bible, as well as a game of tables (see Chapter 2).59 Osbern’s commentary stressed the foxes’ relationship with the ‘little foxes’ that destroy the Lord’s vineyard in the Song of Songs (Song 2:15), and that were entrenched in exegesis as symbols of heresy, notably in Prudentius (c. 500): ‘Just so nowadays the cunning fox of heresy scatters the flames of sin over the fields’.60 The Bible du XIIIe siècle translates the passage accurately: ‘Il ala donc et prist. ccc. gorpilz s ilia leur quues ensemble et brandons de feu el milieu si les leissa aler pour courir ca et la. et il alerent maintenant es blez as philistiens’ (Bern, Burgerbibliothek, Cod. 27, f. 164, transcription mine). The Bible abrégée provides a minimal change, in that this episode is motivated by Samson’s jealousy. He sets the animals alight and sends them through the fields and vineyards in his rage at his wife’s remarriage (Ch. XXXVII). The psalter’s substitution of wolves for foxes is egregious (and there is no link with the modern tag ‘she-wolf of France’ for Isabella, which is an eighteenth-century invention).61 In medieval culture, the wolf is an incorrigible predator. Like the fox, it works through cruelty or deception (the proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing) but unlike its clever rival, its intellect is impeded by its appetites.62 An allegorical wolf represented heretics or religious hypocrites hiding their predatory nature.63 The rubric’s loues may well refer to shewolves, rather than lous (wolves). In the Roman de la Rose, Vieille stipulates that a woman who sets out to get money from men must be like a she-wolf raiding a sheep pen (Rose, ll. 13552–13558). The analogy

106 

C. LÉGLU

draws on the other stereotype of the she-wolf as lupa, a whore.64 In Samson, dux fortissime, Delilah is a vixen, not a she-wolf (st. 9, ll. 68–69). The Bible anglo-normande reveals that the translator encountered a problem in the corresponding part of the Vulgate, but it has nothing to do with wolves. The translator/scribe of Royal 1 C III could not translate the Latin noun faces (torches): Royal MS 1 C III: Et prist treis sentz de goupils et ioint lour cowes a cowes et lia […] en la meiene. Les queues il allumait de feu le lessa qil coururent cea et la. (f. 175r, col. 2)

(And he took three hundred foxes and he joined their tails to tails and tied… in the middle. The tails he lit with fire, he left them to run here and there.) The artist of the ‘Queen Mary Psalter’ has no trouble rendering the torches, rather than the animals. As I noted above, the torches and foxes had a strong iconographic tradition. There is a little hesitation here about how to write the foxes’ tails. First they are given as cowes, and next as queues. Leaving a gap where the translated version of the Latin faces (torches) should have been is understandable if the scribe or the translator had felt confused about cowes. What did the Latin noun faces mean in this context? If there was even slight confusion with the Latin facies (the human face) then it might well have stalled the writing process. Heads or tails: What parts of the foxes were joined together? While the problem with the torches in the Bible anglo-normande does not resolve the deliberate substitution of wolves for foxes in the ‘Queen Mary Psalter’, it does point to divergent understandings of this particular scene. In the ‘Queen Mary Psalter’, the lower margins include common motifs of the fox preaching to the hens, and of a woman chasing a fox that has run away with a chicken. They also depict a young man shaking a club at a fox that is making off with a bird (ff. 120v–122, 160v) (Fig. 4.6). This series of images (the fox stealing the fowl) is an allusion to the adventures of Renart (Le Roman de Renart, branche 2).65 The men’s

4  PROSE AND IMAGE 

107

Fig. 4.6  © British Library Board. British Library MS Royal 2 B VII, fol. 122

108 

C. LÉGLU

clubs echo that of the young, beardless Samson who sends the lupine foxes into the fields of the Philistines (f. 44v). These marginal foxes are not always indisputably vulpine (ff. 157v– 158, 160). A grey version could be mistaken for a dog or a wolf (ff. 87v–88r, 103r).66 The ‘Queen Mary Psalter shares its ambivalent foxes, wolves and dogs with its famous contemporary, the Gorleston Psalter (British Library Add. MS 49622, c. 1310–1024, 35r, 149v, 157v–158). Notoriously slippery, marginal images are also springboards for creative interpretation.67 It is unlikely that artists would have confused the neighbouring fox with wolves that lived in remote parts. Fox-hunting was a matter of speed, whereas a wolf hunt was notoriously dangerous for both men and dogs.68 Some of these grey canines are able to twist their necks back to look at their pursuants, which was impossible for wolves according to bestiaries.69 What remains is a simple observation: in the margins of the ‘Queen Mary Psalter’, the predatory fox and wolf can be mistaken for each other. Someone who cannot tell a dangerous wolf from a cunning fox or a loyal dog should not go hunting in the forest of the court. This Samson cycle’s coded meanings and glosses may well be ascribed to the troubled context of a royal court in crisis, but examining the word-for-word translation in Royal I C III throws up the hitherto unsuspected problem of the Vulgate’s obscurity for its translators. The familiar tale might not have been quite so familiar. Moments of doubt opened up gaps in the tight weave of the text, where double meanings and connotations could emerge. Exegetically and narratively speaking, the episode of the foxes is in any case problematic. Samson’s revenge is pointless, given the fact that he abandoned his bride during her wedding feast. The foxes bring about his wife’s death by burning, thus making him the agent of a threat that was made against her during the wedding feast by his Philistine companions, when they sought to solve his riddle. Ultimately, the fault lies with Samson and with his riddle, and that results from his decision to tell no one about his lion-killing. Thus, Samson’s lion-killing, that key act, triggers a destructive sequence of acts that lead to his death. Samson’s silences and riddles provoke reflection on the unreliability of language. Individuals who had a fluent but not flawless, grasp of French and Latin wrote these manuscripts. A fox can become a wolf if the translator makes a minor mistake or plugs a hole in the text with a guess. Leaving a gap (saying nothing) only creates confusion. Simplifying the narrative can produce disastrous results, as can inserting too much interpretation.

4  PROSE AND IMAGE 

109

The broader context for this detailed examination of three French renderings of the Samson story is the importance of French in England after 1300.70 Ingham has stressed the importance of monasteries, church schools and grammar schools for French-medium education in England up to the Black Death (1348). A shift during the 1350s to education and writing in English did not abolish the everyday, non-elite use of French in England.71 In this context, the insertion of English words into Royal MS 1 C III points to the changing linguistic environment. Nobel agrees cautiously with Berger’s suggestion that Royal MS 1 C III might have been copied in Reading Abbey.72 A secular source is plausible, given that monks were free to visit secular booksellers.73 Coates proposed that Reading Abbey’s school provided a grounding in French for its pupils, who were a mixture of boys of the town and the sons of wealthy men.74 However, ‘classroom’ Bibles in this period were often glossed, and these examples are not. There is no evidence of tabulation or cross-referencing in Royal MS 1 C III.75 On the other hand, two-volume vernacular bibles (like the Bible du XIIIe siècle) appear in several inventories of the later Middle Ages, almost exclusively in the households of the laity and often owned by women. Indeed, Isabella of France bequeathed a two-volume ‘biblia in gallicis’ to her daughter.76 Samson and the use of French link Royal MS 1 C III with Harley MS 978 (see Chapter 3). Samson, dux fortissime, was still being performed in the fourteenth century. Ingham built on the observation that elementary education took place in the schola cantus to suggest that young boys learned French at the same time as they learned to sing.77 Reeves also concludes that religious houses played a crucial role in both teaching and maintaining the use of French in England. Reeves comments that ‘the English cleric’s Anglo-Norman was better than his Latin’.78 The fact that vernacular Bibles were given to nunneries points to the teaching of French within women’s religious communities.79 These reworkings of Judges 13–16 show different approaches to making the text accessible in a language that was increasingly becoming hard to acquire. It may be no coincidence that the surviving copies of the Bible anglo-normande and the Bible abrégée cluster around the immediate aftermath of the Black Death, which first struck the SouthEast of England in October 1348, and returned in 1361.80 Europe lost many lectors and priests, meaning that the translated Bibles of the 1350s point less to fashion than to a need to accelerate the education of newly priested monks. Ingham has also noted that the 1350s saw a

110 

C. LÉGLU

swift move away from the use of French-medium teaching. Coates notes that Reading’s monastic community never reclaimed the numbers of the pre-Plague era, and in 1354, Pope Innocent VI received a request to grant the exceptional ordination of thirty twenty-year-old monks to serve there. The return of Plague in 1361 touched the abbey again.81 The Plague killed up to half the teachers and scribes who had used French as a means of acquiring and transmitting Latin. The next generation, deprived of these agents of linguistic transmission, preferred to use English.82 This might explain the English loanwords of Royal MS 1 C III, as well as the absence of readers’ annotations, as if the manuscript had lost relevance quickly. Marginalia in a royal psalter transmitted intimate messages that are probably lost to modern readers. Prose translations provided a different kind of reception of the Vulgate, and this reception opened it to a much larger audience. Both modes of receiving and reinscribing the Samson story reveal gaps and failures in communication, when the words did not make sense or the images did not represent their intended animal. These minor failures of translation are also moments of creativity, when other languages and new ideas gained expression. In the reading communities of late medieval England, this gave new dimensions to the story of Samson.

Notes







1.  Parts of this chapter are reproduced with permission from, “Reading Abbey’s Anglo-Norman French Translation of the Bible: London British Library Royal MS 1 C III”, Special Issue of Reading Medieval Studies, ed. Laura Cleaver, 42 (2016): 131–155. 2. Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, “‘Invisible Archives?’ Later Medieval French in England”, Speculum, 90.3 (2015): 653–673. 3. “La Lumere as lais” by Pierre d’Abernon of Fetcham, ed. Glynn Hesketh, 3 vols. (London: ANTS, 2000), III, 5–10. 4. Andrew Reeves, Religious Education in Thirteenth-Century England: The Creed and Articles of Faith (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2015), 79–86; Jean-Pascal Pouzet, “Augustinian Canons and Their Insular French Books in Medieval England: Towards an Assessment”, in Language and Culture in Medieval Britain: The French of England, c.1100–c.1500, ed. Jocelyn Wogan-Browne (Woodbridge: York Medieval Press, 2009), 266–277.

4  PROSE AND IMAGE 











111

5.  Sabina Magrini, “Latin Bibles, Vernacular Bibles, and the Paris Bible in Italy from the Thirteenth to the Fifteenth Century”, in Form and Function in the Late Medieval Bible, ed. E. Poleg and Laura Light (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2013), 238; Margaret Hoogvliet, “‘Pour faire laies personnes entendre les hystoires des escriptures anciennes’: Theoretical Approaches to a Social History of Religious Reading in the French Vernaculars During the Late Middle Ages”, in Cultures of Religious Reading in the Late Middle Ages: Instructing the Soul, Feeding the Spirit, and Awakening the Passion, ed. S. Corbellini (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 251–258. 6.  Laura Light, “The Bible and the Individual: The Thirteenth-Century Paris Bible”, in The Practice of the Bible in the Middle Ages: Production, Reception and Performance in Western Christianity, ed. Susan Boynton and Diane J. Reilly (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 228–246. 7.  Nobel, “La traduction biblique”, 213. Light, “The Bible and the Individual.” 8. Manuscript online: http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts. Anne Rudloff Stanton, “The Queen Mary Psalter: A Study of Affect and Audience”, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, n.s., 91 (2001): 1–287; Anne Rudloff Stanton, “Isabelle of France and Her Manuscripts”, in Capetian Women, ed. Kathleen Nolan (New York: Palgrave, 2003), 234–237. 9.  Nobel, “La Bible anglo-normande et la Bible d’Acre”. Camille, “Visualising”, 104. Quereuil, La Bible française, 38–40. Clive R. Sneddon, “‘The Bible du XIIIe Siècle’: Its Medieval Public in the Light of Its Manuscript Tradition”, in The Bible and Medieval Culture, ed. W. Lourdaux and D. Verhelst (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1979), 127–140; Clive Sneddon, “On the Creation of the Old French Bible”, Nottingham Medieval Studies, 46 (2002): 25–44. 10. http://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/fr/searchresult/list/one/bbb/0027. 11.  La Bible française du XIIIe siècle: édition critique de la Genèse, ed. Michel Quereuil (Geneva: Droz, 1988). 12. Berger, 387–389. François Avril, “Une Bible Historiale de Charles V”, Jahrbuch der Hamburger Kunst Sammlungen, 15–16 (1970): 45, 49; Carra Ferguson O’Meara, Monarchy and Consent: The Coronation Book of Charles V of France: British Library MS Tiberius B VIII (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001), 265–271; Pierre Nobel, “La Bible anglo-normande et la Bible d’Acre: Question de source”, L’Histoire littéraire: ses méthodes et ses résultats, mélanges offerts à Madeleine Bertaud, ed. Luc Fraisse (Geneva: Droz, 2001), 429–448.

112 

C. LÉGLU

13. Coates, 65–69. James H. Morey, “Peter Comestor, Biblical Paraphrase, and the Medieval Popular Bible”, Speculum, 68 (1993): 6–35; Pierre Nobel, “La traduction biblique”, in Translations médiévales. Cinq siècles de traductions en français au Moyen Âge (XIe–XVe siècles): Étude et répertoire, ed. Claudio Galderisi and Vladimir Agrigoroaei, 3 vols. (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), I, 213–214. 14. Ruth Dean and Maureen Bolton, Anglo-Norman Literature, A Guide to Texts and Manuscripts (London: ANTS, 1999), 469; Samuel Berger, La Bible française au moyen âge: étude sur les plus anciennes versions de la bible écrites en prose de langue d’oïl (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1884), 230–237, 325–325, 351–352, 386. 15. Alan Coates, English Medieval Books: The Reading Abbey Collections from Foundation to Dispersal (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 106. 16. Léglu, “Reading Abbey’s Anglo-Norman”; Anne Wanono, “Une Bible anglo-normande à la source d’une Bible française du XIVe siècle?” in Un espace colonial et ses avatars: Naissance d’identités nationales: Angleterre, France, Irlande (Ve-XVe siècles), ed. Florence Connochie Bourgne, Leo Carruthers, and Arlette Sancery (Paris: Presses de l’Université ParisSorbonne, 2008), 203–219. 17. Lydie Lansard, “Proximité et mise à distance du texte biblique dans la version en moyen français de l’Évangile de Nicodème”, in Textes sacrés et culture profane: de la révélation à la création, ed. Mélanie Adda (Bern et al.: Peter Lang, 2010), 45–51. 18. Berger, La Bible française, 23, 230–237, 351, 386. Nobel, Poème, I, 21. Lansard, “Proximité”, 27–51. 19. Hoogvliet, “Pour faire laies personnes”, 258–259. Margaret Hoogvliet, “The Medieval Vernacular Bible in French as a Flexible Text: Selective and Discontinuous Reading Practices”, Form and Function in the Late Medieval Bible, ed. Eyal Poleg and Laura Light (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 283–306. 20. Anne McGee Morganstern, Gothic Tombs of Kinship: In France, the Low Countries, and England (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2000), 188. 21. Donald Drew Egbert, “The So-Called ‘Greenfield’ La Lumiere as Lais and Apocalypse, Brit. Mus., Royal MS. 15 D II”, Speculum, 11 (1936): 446–452; Michael Camille, “Visualising in the Vernacular: A New Cycle of Early Fourteenth-Century Bible Illustrations”, The Burlington Magazine, 130.1019 (1988): 105. 22. Coates, 164. The Libraries of King Henry VIII, ed. J. P. Carley (Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues, 7) (London: The British Library, 2000), xxxvi, 48. 23. Coates, 113–121.

4  PROSE AND IMAGE 

113

24. See Léglu, “Reading Abbey”; Pierre Nobel, “Gloses anglaises et latines dans une traduction biblique anglo-normande (MS Londres, BL Royal MS 1 C III)”, in «Si a parlé par moult ruistre vertu» : Mélanges offerts à Jean Subrenat, ed. Jean Dufournet (Paris: Champion, 2000), 419–435. See also by Nobel, “La Bible de Jean de Sy et la Bible anglo-normande”, Florilegium, 24 (2007): 81–107. 25.  Key studies include Rita Copeland, Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translation in the Middle Ages: Academic Traditions and Vernacular Texts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); and The Practice of the Bible in the Middle Ages: Production, Reception, and Performance in Western Christianity, ed. Susan Boynton and Diane J. Reilly (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011). 26.  Alpo Honkapohja, “Manuscript Abbreviations in Latin and English: History, Typologies and How to Tackle Them in Encoding”, VARIENG: Studies in Variation, Contacts and Change in English, 14 (2013): Special Issue, “Principles and Practices for the Digital Editing and Annotation of Diachronic Data”, ed. Anneli Meurman-Solin and Jukka Tyrkkö: http:// www.helsinki.fi/varieng/series/volumes/14/index.html. See also Alpo Honkapohja, “The Trinity Seven Planets”, Scholarly Editing, 24 (2013): http://scholarlyediting.org/2013/editions/intro.sevenplanets.html. 27.  The Oxford Psalter (Bodleian MS Douce 320), ed. Ian Short (Oxford: ANTS, 2015), 10. 28. Coates, 65–69. 29. The Peter of Poitiers scheme is ff. 25–26. This codex is fragmented and incomplete, including Proverbs and the Song of Songs. Judges runs only from Chapter 5, with an interruption. It resumes part-way through Judges 14. 30. Stanton, “The Queen Mary Psalter”, 28, 108–112, 114, 171, 213. 31. Stanton, “The Queen Mary Psalter”, 114, 171. 32. Folio 41v, ed. Stanton, “The Queen Mary Psalter”, 253–254. 33. Stanton, “The Queen Mary Psalter”, 188–189, 213. 34. Paris BNF fr. 9562, f. 62, col. 1. Transcription mine. 35. Smith, “History.” 36. Smith, “History”, 153, and note 45. 37. Stanton, “The Queen Mary Psalter”, 110–114. 38.  Stanton, “Isabelle of France”, 229, 234–237: http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/~db/0005/bsb00056556/images/index.html. 39. Claire Valente, “The ‘Lament of Edward II’: Religious Lyric, Political Propaganda”, Speculum, 77.2 (2002): 422–439. On wall paintings, see Smith, “A ‘Viewing Community’”, 161–166. 40. Stanton, “Isabelle of France”, 230–232. 41. Sydney Cockerell, letter of 1901 preserved in MS (see digitized online copy).

114 

C. LÉGLU

42. Smith, “History”, 156; and Stanton, “Isabelle of France”, 235–237. 43.  Smith, “History”; Stanton, “Isabelle of France”; and Suzanne Lewis, “The Apocalypse of Isabella of France: Paris, Bibl. Nat. Ms Fr. 13096”, The Art Bulletin, 72 (1990): 224–260. 44.  Kathryn A. Smith, Art, Identity and Devotion in Fourteenth-Century England: Three Women and Their Books of Hours (London and Toronto: British Library and University of Toronto Press, 2003), 257–259. 45. The Oxford Psalter, ed. Ian Short (Oxford: Anglo-Norman Texts Society, 2015), 72, 198–199. 46. Short, Oxford Psalter, 11–13, 159. 47. British Library Royal MS 1 C III, ff. 173v, col. 2–177r, col. 1. 48. Biblia Sacra iuxta vulgatam versionem, ed. R. Weber and R. Gryson, 4th ed. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1994). 49. British Library Add. MS 54230, f. 8v, “…tibiam unius pedis super femur alterius ponerent” (transcription mine). 50. MED, vol. 2, 580. 51. Stanton, “The Queen Mary Psalter”, 253–254. 52.  The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, ed. T. F. Hoad (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). 53. Eléonore Fournié, “Sources et documents: la Bible Historiale”, Atelier du Centre de recherches historiques, 3.2 (2009):  http://acrh.revues. org/1830. Rubrics in three manuscripts of the Bible historiale are published online by Allen Farber, Marginal Matters: http://employees.oneonta.edu/farberas/arth/marginal_matters/bible_historiale_rubrics.html. 54. Fournié, “Sources”. Rubrics by Farber: http://employees.oneonta.edu/ farberas/arth/marginal_matters/bible_historiale_rubrics.html. 55. All rubrics transcribed from Paris BNF fr. 9562, f. 5 col. 1–5v, col. 2. 56. See Chapter 1. Gunn, “Samson of Sorrows”, 250. 57. Othniel Margalith, “Samson’s Foxes”, Vetus Testamentum, 35.2 (1985): 224–229. 58. Transcription by Stanton, “The Queen Mary Psalter”, 254. 59.  Matthew J. Grey and Jodi Magness, “Finding Samson in Byzantine Galilee: The 2011–2012 Archaeological Excavations at Huqoq”, Studies in the Bible and Antiquity, 5 (2013): 1–30. Mann, Art and Ceremony, Fig. 14. Morgan Library Picture Bible, f. 17. 60.  Prudentius, XVII, trans. in Caecilia Davis-Weyer, Early Medieval Art, 300–1150: Sources and Documents (Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1986), 28; Irene Bueno, “False Prophets and Ravening Wolves: Biblical Exegesis as a Tool Against Heretics in Jacques Fournier’s Postilla on Matthew”, Speculum, 89.1 (2014): 35–65. 61. “She-wolf of France, with unrelenting fangs,/ That tear’st the bowels of thy mangled mate,/ From thee be born, who o’er thy country hangs/ The scourge of heav’n. What terrors round him wait!”, “The Bard”, The

4  PROSE AND IMAGE 

115

Works of Thomas Gray, ed. J. Mitford (London: William Pickering, 1836), I, 45, ll. 57–61. For discussion of the epithet, see Stanton, “The Queen Mary Psalter”, 222; and Sophia Menache, “Isabelle of France, Queen of England: A Reconsideration”, Journal of Medieval History, 10 (1984): 107–124. 62. Giuseppa Z. Zanichelli, “The Wolf: Between Oral and Written Culture in the Twelfth Century”, Notes in the History of Art, 33.3–4 (2014): 44–48; Aleksander Pluskowski, Wolves and the Wilderness in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2006). 63. Bueno, “False Prophets”. Jonathan Morton, “Wolves in Human Skin: Questions of Animal Appetite in Jean de Meun’s Roman de la Rose”, The Modern Language Review, 105.4 (2010): 979–980, 985–986. 64. Morton, “Wolves in Human Skin”, 988. 65. Jean Wirth and Isabelle Engammare, Les Marges à drôleries des manuscrits gothiques (1250–1350) (Geneva: Droz, 2008). 66. Wirth, Les Marges, 164–167. 67. Wirth, Les Marges, 28–32, 37–38. Katherine Sedovic, “Seeking the Sacred Within the Secular: A Study of the Aspremont-Kievraing Psalter’s Chivalric and Heraldic Marginalia”, Selected Proceedings from “On the Edge”, March 2015. The Reading Medievalist, vol. 3, ed. Harriet Mahood (University of Reading, October 2016), 61–75: http://blogs. reading.ac.uk/trm/files/2016/11/Sedovic-1.pdf. 68. Susan Koslow, “Law and Order in Rubens’s Wolf and Fox Hunt”, The Art Bulletin, 78.4 (1996): 684–686. 69. Richard de Fournival, Le Bestiaire d’Amour, 166. 70. Wogan-Browne, «Invisible archives»?; Andres M. Kristol, “L’intellectuel ‘anglo-normand’ face à la pluralité des langues: le témoignage implicite du MS Oxford, Magdalen Lat. 188”, Multilingualism in Later Medieval Britain, ed. D. A. Trotter (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2000), 37–52. See also Language and Culture in Medieval Britain: The French of England, c.1100–1500, ed. Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, et  al. (Woodbridge and Rochester, NY: Boydell, 2009). 71. Richard Ingham, The Transmission of Anglo-Norman: Language History and Language Acquisition (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2012), 29–35. 72. Nobel, “La Bible de Jean de Sy”, 85, citing Berger, 230, 234. Nobel suggests the same in “Les translateurs bibliques et leur public: l’exemple de la Bible d’Acre et de la Bible anglo-normande”, Revue de linguistique romane, 66 (2000): 451–472. 73.  Andrew Taylor, “Manual to Miscellany: Stages in the Commercial Copying of Vernacular Literature in England”, The Yearbook of English Studies, 33 (2003): 1–17. 74. Wanono, “Une Bible anglo-normande”, 211–213; Coates, 69.

116 

C. LÉGLU



75. Light, “The Bible and the Individual”, 228, 239. 76. Camille, “Visualising in the Vernacular”, 105–106. 77. Ingham, The Transmission of Anglo-Norman, 33. 78. Reeves, Religious Education, 133. 79. Reeves, Religious Education, 130–134. 80. Ole J. Benedictow, The Black Death, 1346–1353: The Complete History (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2004), 134. 81. Coates, 17, n. 66, and 121. 82. Ingham, The Transmission of Anglo-Norman, 35.

Bibliography Avril, François. “Une Bible Historiale de Charles V”, Jahrbuch der Hamburger Kunst Sammlungen, 15–16 (1970): 45–76. Benedictow, Ole J. The Black Death, 1346–1353: The Complete History. Woodbridge: Boydell, 2004. Berger, Samuel. La Bible française au moyen âge: étude sur les plus anciennes versions de la Bible écrites en prose de langue d’oïl. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1884. Biblia Sacra iuxta vulgatam versionem, ed. R. Weber and R. Gryson, 4th ed. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1994. Boynton, Susan, and Diane J. Reilly. The Practice of the Bible in the Middle Ages: Production, Reception, and Performance in Western Christianity. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011. Bueno, Irene. “False Prophets and Ravening Wolves: Biblical Exegesis as a Tool Against Heretics in Jacques Fournier’s Postilla on Matthew”, Speculum, 89.1 (2014): 52–53. Camille, Michael. “Visualising in the Vernacular: A New Cycle of Early Fourteenth-Century Bible Illustrations”, The Burlington Magazine, 130.1019 (1988): 97–106. Carley, J. P., ed. The Libraries of King Henry VIII (Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues, 7). London: The British Library, 2000. Coates, Alan. English Medieval Books: The Reading Abbey Collections from Foundation to Dispersal. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, ed. T. F. Hoad. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Copeland, Rita. Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translation in the Middle Ages: Academic Traditions and Vernacular Texts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Davis-Weyer, Caecilia. Early Medieval Art, 300–1150: Sources and Documents. Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1986.

4  PROSE AND IMAGE 

117

de Fournival, Richard. Le Bestiaire d’Amour et La Réponse au Bestiaire, ed. Gabriel Bianciotto. Paris: Champion Classiques, 2009. Dean, Ruth, and Maureen Bolton. Anglo-Norman Literature, a Guide to Texts and Manuscripts. London: ANTS, 1999. Denifle, Heinrich, and Emile Châtelaine. Chartularium universitatis parisiensis, II. Paris: Ex typis fratrum Delalain, 1891. d’Esneval, Amaury. “La division de la Vulgate latine en chapitres dans l’édition parisienne du XIIIe siècle”, Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques, 62 (1978): 559–568. Egbert, Donald Drew. “The So-Called ‘Greenfield’ La Lumiere as Lais and Apocalypse, Brit. Mus., Royal MS. 15 D II”, Speculum, 11 (1936): 446–452. Farber, Allen. Marginal Matters: http://employees.oneonta.edu/farberas/arth/ marginal_matters/bible_historiale_rubrics.html. Fournié, Eléonore. “Sources et documents: la Bible Historiale”, Atelier du Centre de recherches historiques, 3.2 (2009):  http://acrh.revues.org/1830. Grey, Thomas. The Works of Thomas Gray, ed. J. Mitford. London: William Pickering, 1836. Grey, Matthew J., and Jodi Magness. “Finding Samson in Byzantine Galilee: The 2011–2012 Archaeological Excavations at Huqoq”, Studies in the Bible and Antiquity, 5 (2013): 1–30. Handschriftencensus: http://www.handschriftencensus.de/19141. Hesketh, Glynn, ed. “La Lumere as lais” by Pierre d’Abernon of Fetcham, 3 vols. London: ANTS, 2000. Honkapohja, Alpo. “Manuscript Abbreviations in Latin and English: History, Typologies and How to Tackle Them in Encoding”, VARIENG: Studies in Variation, Contacts and Change in English, 14 (2013): Special Issue, “Principles and Practices for the Digital Editing and Annotation of Diachronic Data”, ed. Anneli Meurman-Solin and Jukka Tyrkkö: http:// www.helsinki.fi/varieng/series/volumes/14/index.html. ———. “The Trinity Seven Planets”, Scholarly Editing, 24 (2013): http://scholarlyediting.org/2013/editions/intro.sevenplanets.html. Hoogvliet, Margaret. “‘Pour faire laies personnes entendre les hystoires des escriptures anciennes’: Theoretical Approaches to a Social History of Religious Reading in the French Vernaculars During the Late Middle Ages”, in Cultures of Religious Reading in the Late Middle Ages: Instructing the Soul, Feeding the Spirit, and Awakening the Passion, ed. S. Corbellini, 247–274. Turnhout: Brepols, 2013. ———. “The Medieval Vernacular Bible in French as a Flexible Text: Selective and Discontinuous Reading Practices”, Form and Function in the Late Medieval Bible, ed. Eyal Poleg and Laura Light, 283–306. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Ingham, Richard. The Transmission of Anglo-Norman: Language History and Language Acquisition. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2012.

118 

C. LÉGLU

James, Montague Rhodes. A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of Lambeth Palace. Cambridge: Cambridge Antiquarian Society, 1900. Koslow, Susan. “Law and Order in Rubens’s Wolf and Fox Hunt”, The Art Bulletin, 78.4 (1996): 681–706. Kristol, Andres M. “L’intellectuel ‘anglo-normand’ face à la pluralité des langues: le témoignage implicite du MS Oxford, Magdalen Lat. 188”, Multilingualism in Later Medieval Britain, ed. D. A. Trotter, 37–52. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2000. La Bible française du XIIIe siècle: édition critique de la Genèse, ed. Michel Quereuil. Geneva: Droz, 1988. Lansard, Lydie. “Proximité et mise à distance du texte biblique dans la version en moyen français de l’Évangile de Nicodème”, in Textes sacrés et culture profane: de la révélation à la création, ed. Mélanie Adda, 27–51. Bern et al.: Peter Lang, 2010. Léglu, Catherine. “Reading Abbey’s Anglo-Norman French Translation of the Bible: London British Library Royal MS 1 C III”, Special Issue of Reading Medieval Studies, ed. Laura Cleaver, 42 (2016): 131–155. Lewis, Suzanne. “The Apocalypse of Isabella of France: Paris, Bibl. Nat. Ms Fr. 13096”, The Art Bulletin, 72 (1990): 224–260. Light, Laura. “The Bible and the Individual: The Thirteenth-Century Paris Bible”, in The Practice of the Bible in the Middle Ages: Production, Reception and Performance in Western Christianity, ed. Susan Boynton and Diane J. Reilly, 228–246. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011. Magrini, Sabina. “Latin Bibles, Vernacular Bibles, and the Paris Bible in Italy from the Thirteenth to the Fifteenth Century”, in Form and Function in the Late Medieval Bible, ed. E. Poleg and Laura Light, 237–259. Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2013. Margalith, Othniel. “Samson’s Foxes”, Vetus Testamentum, 35.2 (1985): 224–229. Menache, Sophia. “Isabelle of France, Queen of England: A Reconsideration”, Journal of Medieval History, 10 (1984): 107–124. Morey, James H. “Peter Comestor, Biblical Paraphrase, and the Medieval Popular Bible”, Speculum, 68 (1993): 6–35. Morganstern, Anne McGee. Gothic Tombs of Kinship: In France, the Low Countries, and England. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2000. Morton, Jonathan. “Wolves in Human Skin: Questions of Animal Appetite in Jean de Meun’s Roman de la Rose”, The Modern Language Review, 105.4 (2010): 976–997. Nobel, Pierre. “Les translateurs bibliques et leur public: l’exemple de la Bible d’Acre et de la Bible anglo-normande”, Revue de linguistique romane, 66 (2000): 451–472.

4  PROSE AND IMAGE 

119

———. “Gloses anglaises et latines dans une traduction biblique anglo-normande (MS Londres, BL Royal MS 1 C III”, in «Si a parlé par moult ruistre vertu»: Mélanges offerts à Jean Subrenat, ed. Jean Dufournet, 419–435. Paris: Champion, 2000. ———. “La Bible anglo-normande et la Bible d’Acre: Question de source”, L’Histoire littéraire: ses méthodes et ses résultats, mélanges offerts à Madeleine Bertaud, ed. Luc Fraisse, 429–448. Geneva: Droz, 2001. ———. “La Bible de Jean de Sy et la Bible anglo-normande”, Florilegium, 24 (2007): 81–107. ———. “La traduction biblique”, in Translations médiévales. Cinq siècles de traductions en français au Moyen Âge (XIe–XVe siècles). Étude et répertoire, ed. Claudio Galderisi and Vladimir Agrigoroaei, 3 vols., 207–223. Turnhout: Brepols, 2011. O’Meara, Carra Ferguson. Monarchy and Consent: The Coronation Book of Charles V of France: British Library MS Tiberius B VIII. Turnhout: Brepols, 2001. Pouzet, Jean-Pascal. “Augustinian Canons and Their Insular French Books in Medieval England: Towards an Assessment”, in Language and Culture in Medieval Britain: The French of England, c.1100–c.1500, ed. Jocelyn WoganBrowne, 266–277. Woodbridge: York Medieval Press, 2009. Pluskowski, Aleksander. Wolves and the Wilderness in the Middle Ages. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2006. Reeves, Andrew. Religious Education in Thirteenth-Century England: The Creed and Articles of Faith. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2015. Sedovic, Katherine. “Seeking the Sacred Within the Secular: A Study of the Aspremont-Kievraing Psalter’s Chivalric and Heraldic Marginalia”, Selected Proceedings from “On the Edge”, March 2015. The Reading Medievalist, vol. 3, ed. Harriet Mahood (University of Reading, October 2016), 61–75: http://blogs.reading.ac.uk/trm/files/2016/11/Sedovic-1.pdf. Sherman, Claire Richter. Imaging Aristotle: Verbal and Visual Representation in Fourteenth-Century France. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995. Short, Ian, ed. The Oxford Psalter (Bodleian MS Douce 320). Oxford: ANTS, 2015. Smith, Kathryn A. Art, Identity and Devotion in Fourteenth-Century England: Three Women and Their Books of Hours. London and Toronto: British Library and University of Toronto Press, 2003. ———. “‘A Viewing Community’ in Fourteenth-Century England”, in The Social Life of Illumination: Manuscripts, Images and Communities in the Late Middle Agesf, ed. Joyce Coleman, Mark Cruse, and Kathryn A. Smith, 121– 176. Turnhout: Brepols, 2014.

120 

C. LÉGLU

Sneddon, Clive R. “‘The Bible du XIIIe Siècle’: Its Medieval Public in the Light of Its Manuscript Tradition”, in The Bible and Medieval Culture, ed. W. Lourdaux and D. Verhelst, 127–140. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1979. ———. “On the Creation of the Old French Bible”, Nottingham Medieval Studies, 46 (2002): 25–44. Stanton, Anne Rudloff. “The Queen Mary Psalter: A Study of Affect and Audience”, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, New Series, 91 (2001): 1–287. ———. “Isabelle of France and Her Manuscripts”, in Capetian Women, ed. Kathleen Nolan, 225–252. New York: Palgrave, 2003. Stones, Alison. “The Illustrations of BN, Fr. 95 and Yale 229: Prolegomena to a Comparative Analysis”, in Word and Image in Arthurian Literature, ed. Keith Busby, 202–263. New York: Garland, 1996. Stratford, Jenny. The Bedford Inventories: The Wordly Goods of John, Duke of Bedford, Regent of France (1389–1435). London: Society of Antiquaries of London, 1993. Taylor, Andrew. “Manual to Miscellany: Stages in the Commercial Copying of Vernacular Literature in England”, The Yearbook of English Studies, 33 (2003): 1–17. The Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND): The Anglo-Norman Online Hub: http:// www.anglo-norman.net/. The Oxford Psalter, ed. Ian Short (Oxford: Anglo-Norman Texts Society, 2015), 72, 198–199. Thomas, Antoine. “Jean de Sy et Jean de Cis”, Romania, 21 (1892): 612–615. Valente, Claire. “The ‘Lament of Edward II’: Religious Lyric, Political Propaganda”, Speculum, 77.2 (2002): 422–439. Wanono, Anne. “Une Bible anglo-normande à la source d’une Bible française du XIVe siècle?” Un espace colonial et ses avatars: Naissance d’identités nationales: Angleterre, France, Irlande (Ve-XVe siècles), ed. Florence Connochie Bourgne, Leo Carruthers, and Arlette Sancery, 203–219. Paris: Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2008. Wirth, Jean, and Isabelle Engammare. Les Marges à drôleries des manuscrits gothiques (1250–1350). Geneva: Droz, 2008. Wogan-Browne, Jocelyn, et al., ed. Language and Culture in Medieval Britain: The French of England, c.1100–1500. Woodbridge and Rochester NY: Boydell, 2009. ———. “‘Invisible Archives?’: Later Medieval French in England”, Speculum, 90.3 (2015): 653–673. Zanichelli, Giuseppa Z. “The Wolf: Between Oral and Written Culture in the Twelfth Century”, Notes in the History of Art, 33.3–4 (2014): 44–48.

Conclusion

The story and figure of Samson are so familiar that their complexities are easily overlooked. This book has explored a narrative that takes up only four chapters in the Bible through the prisms of translation from Latin to Old French, transpositions from written to visual genres, musical adaptation and the relationship between images and written inscriptions. I have suggested that Samson and Delilah were pitted against each other in many ways, serving a number of themes: love, betrayal, good and evil, men and women. A frame narrowed to a relatively limited geographical region, with a chronology ranging over no more than two centuries, and addressing only Latin and French in a multilingual context, allows the complexities and their attendant contradictions to stand out. The importance of riddles to the Samson story can be identified in the obscure inscriptions that accompany some images, as well as in the fractured meanings ascribed to the hero’s fate in musical adaptations. In medieval Christian exegesis, typology overlaid the narrative with additional symbolism and threw some episodes into relief. It did not, however, close down the potential for different and multiple interpretations. Samson as lion-killer could represent strength as much as peace, either triumph or the first signs of future defeat. Moreover, as it was put into French or images, the conflict between Samson and Delilah proved resistant to theological interpretation, and it emerges in the vernacular treatments as much as in images and music as a matter of gender rather than good and evil. This is a hyper-masculine figure defined primarily by © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018 C. Léglu, Samson and Delilah in Medieval Insular French, The New Middle Ages, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90638-6

121

122  Conclusion

his vulnerability to his own desire for women, a master of the animals who cannot live with his fellow human beings. The many different translations that I have studied in this book demonstrate that translation is neither a mechanical nor a confident process. The different scribal decisions that appear in several copies of the Prose Book of Judges are the tip of the iceberg compared to the divergent approaches taken by fourteenth-century translators, torn between word-for-word fidelity and a creative summary. Images are also great indicators of how a text was understood and explained, both in Romanesque sculpture (for uses and dimensions great and small) and in Gothic-era manuscript illumination. Every example points to interpretation, with the narrative harnessed sometimes in surprisingly politicised, personal ways. Musical and poetic treatments raise further questions about how audiences received and understood this material, especially when it was performed to dramatic, emotional effect. Whether they listened, looked, played, debated, read silently or aloud, each participant in these many transactions was engaged in trying to understand the biblical source. The story of Samson preserved its inconsistencies and its instability. The many ways in which it was recreated placed it in new frames of reference, endowed it with new functions and enabled the creation of new audiences. As I noted in the closing pages of chapter four, by the mid-fourteenth century, the audience for the French language was diminishing, as was that of the Latin tongue. In such contexts, narratives offer robust objects that writers and artists can find new ways of transmitting. It is only part of a much wider and longer transmission history, showing early signs of the dramatisations and humanisations that would mark adaptations of the Samson story in the modern era.

Index

A Abelard, Peter, 3, 8, 40, 57, 59, 68–70, 72, 74, 75, 78–80 Allegory, 5, 31, 35, 47, 49, 71, 73 Andrew of Saint-Victor, 8, 40 Angel, 2, 7, 41, 48, 61–64, 71, 91 Anglo-Norman French language, 8, 58, 87, 90, 101, 109, 110, 115 Anglo-Norman regions, 8, 58 Animal, fable, 36 Animals, 5, 30, 31, 36, 41, 45, 103, 105, 110, 115 Animals, allegory, 5, 31 Animals, in marginalia, 110 Apocalypse, 20, 89, 98, 103, 112, 114 Aquamanile, 30 Artists, 33, 108, 122 Ass, 9, 37, 91, 101 Augustinian canons, 39, 42, 50, 88, 110 Aurora, 33, 34, 58 Auxerre, 33, 46, 105 B Backgammon. See Board games

Barber, 9, 10, 13, 15, 28 Bestiary. See Animals Bible abrégée, 89–92, 94, 100, 102, 103, 105, 109 Bible Anglo-Normande, 89, 90, 102, 106, 109, 111–113, 115 Bible de Paris (Paris Bible), 9, 88, 111 Bible du XIIIe siècle, 88, 89, 105, 109, 111 Bible historiale, 21, 89, 102, 111, 114 Black Death, 109, 116 Blindness, 61 Board games, 3, 35–37, 39, 47 Bone, animal, 5, 36 Bone, mandible, 31, 36, 37, 101 Book, production, 3, 81 Bristol, 3, 8, 40, 48 Bull, 9 C Chanson de geste, 60, 70 Chess. See Board games Christchurch priory, Canterbury, 73 Cluny, 81 Cologne, 28–30, 35–37

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018 C. Léglu, Samson and Delilah in Medieval Insular French, The New Middle Ages, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90638-6

123

124  Index Comestor, Peter, 33, 45, 46, 88, 112 Compassion, 68, 71, 73, 74, 76 Contradiction, 72, 73, 80, 121 Court, 8, 35, 39–42, 61, 76, 87, 90, 91, 108 Courtliness, 102 D David, King, 69 Delilah, 2, 4, 5, 9, 10, 12–17, 27–30, 34, 35, 37–39, 42, 48, 57, 60, 67, 68, 71–76, 88, 91, 92, 94, 98, 100, 102, 106, 121 de Vigny, Alfred, 4, 5, 16 Disability, 79 Dog, 108 Douay-Rheims Bible, 12 Dragon, 28, 31, 41, 50 Draughts. See Board games E Edward II, King of England, 88, 94, 113 Engin (ingenium), 59–61 Eve, 60, 67, 72 Exegesis, 2, 7, 8, 10, 30, 31, 80, 91, 103, 105, 114, 121 F Folie, 62, 67 Food, 2, 5, 66 Fox, 2, 9, 17, 20, 60, 103, 105, 106, 108, 114, 115 G Gilbert Foliot, 9, 40 Gloucester, 3, 8–10, 20, 35, 39–42, 47, 49, 58, 59

Goat, 31 Gospel of Nicodemus, 89 Grammar school, 42, 88, 109 H Hair, 2, 4, 12–15, 17, 21, 27, 28, 34, 37, 47, 61, 63, 67, 71, 75, 88 Harrowing of Hell, 7, 30, 31, 59, 88, 89 Hebraism, 20, 48, 49 Heloise, 79 Hercules, 5, 30, 36, 37, 44, 45, 47, 69 Hereford, 3, 9, 10, 30, 39, 40, 42, 48, 70 ‘Herefordshire School of Sculpture’, 3, 9, 39, 43 Herman de Valenciennes, 58, 77, 94 Honey, 2, 7, 18, 31, 36, 41, 60, 64–66 Hue de Rotelande, 61, 78 I Isabella of France, queen of England, 88, 94, 109, 114 Islamic art, 30 Israel, country, 5, 59, 68, 70–72, 74, 75, 79 Israel, protagonist, 76 Ivory. See Animals J Jephthah, 59, 68–70, 80 Jerome, 58, 76 Jewish art, 30, 48 Josephus, 59, 64, 65, 77, 78, 94 Judges, book of (Bible), 1–3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 13, 17, 21, 40, 58, 91, 103, 122

Index

L Lamb, 31, 92 Leonius, 19, 33, 46, 59 Libraries, 20, 21, 42, 50, 73, 78, 81, 88–90, 93, 102, 104, 105, 107, 108, 110–112, 114 Lion, 2, 3, 7, 9, 18, 27–37, 39–44, 60, 63–66, 91, 92, 101, 102, 108, 121 Lion, jawbone, 36 Lion-killer, 7, 27, 28, 30, 31, 34, 35, 39–42, 121 Lion-tamer, 41, 42 Literacy, Latin, 32, 100 Literacy, lay, 88, 91 Literacy, vernacular, 8, 58, 76, 88, 115 Literal interpretation, 8, 33 Louis IX, king of France, 58 Love, 1, 2, 6, 7, 10, 17, 61–65, 67–69, 71, 72, 75, 76, 91, 94, 102, 121 M Manoah, biblical figure, 62, 64–67, 91, 102 Manuscripts, 9, 32, 40, 44, 45, 49, 58, 67, 69, 74, 81, 88–91, 98, 100, 108, 110–114, 122 Misogyny, 35, 59, 72 Moissac, 30, 33, 46 Mosaics, 28–30, 105 Mythology, 47, 48 N Narrator, 5, 27, 60, 64, 67, 68, 71, 72, 74 Nazirite oath, 2, 34 O Oedipus, 69, 70, 73, 79, 80

  125

Orality, 8, 58, 90, 115 Osbern Pinnock of Gloucester, 40, 42, 59 Ovid, 9 Oxfordshire, 3, 41, 43 P Palermo, 81 Paraclete, 69, 79, 80 Passion, Christianity, 30, 75, 88 Philistines, 2, 9, 13–15, 35–37, 57, 59, 60, 65, 66, 68, 72, 75, 88, 91, 92, 94, 100, 101, 103, 105, 108 Planctus, 3, 8, 57, 59, 68–76, 78–80 Poitou, 29 Prose, 1, 3, 11–13, 15, 21, 58, 59, 87–89, 91, 94, 110, 112, 122 Psalms, David, King, 69 Psalms, gradual, 98 Psalter, 32, 34, 45, 46, 69, 77, 79, 88, 91, 94, 98, 100, 102, 103, 105, 106, 108, 110, 111, 113–115 R Reading Abbey, 3, 9, 42, 69, 73, 88, 89, 91, 101, 109, 110, 112, 113 Richard of Saint-Victor, 7 Riddle, 2, 6, 12, 17, 18, 28, 33–37, 59–61, 65, 66, 73, 77, 101, 108, 121 Riga, Peter. See Aurora Romance, 3, 58, 60, 61, 69, 76, 78, 91 Rubrics, 27, 30, 74, 91, 92, 94, 100, 102, 105, 114 S Saint-Albans, 9, 38 Saintonge, 29

126  Index Saint-Saëns, Camille, 4, 16 Samson, dux fortissime, 3, 42, 57, 68–70, 73, 75, 76, 80, 81, 91, 92, 100, 106, 109 Sanson de Nanteuil, 42 Scribes, 15, 90, 101, 102, 106 Seduction, 9, 12, 64 Seneca, 69, 78 Sermons, 42, 73 Shropshire, 42, 43, 73 Sight, 62–64 Song, 3, 4, 42, 45, 58, 68–70, 74–76, 78, 79, 81, 94, 105, 113 Statius, 69, 73 St Samson of Dol, 41, 49 T Tables. See Board games Templars, 11 Timnah, woman of, 60, 63, 67, 91, 92, 103 Tituli, 32, 33, 39, 45, 46 Translation-adaptation, 1, 4, 57, 89, 90 Translation, mistakes, 108

Translation, word-for-word, 4, 89, 90, 108, 122 Tropology, 7 Typology, 10, 11, 15, 30, 31, 39, 42, 71, 77, 113, 121 V Vernacular, 3, 8, 11, 16, 27, 39, 43, 58, 70, 73, 76, 87, 88, 90, 94, 101, 103, 109, 111–113, 115, 116, 121 Verse, 1–3, 8, 10–12, 15, 32, 33, 39, 42, 57, 58, 91, 94, 101 Violence, 4, 6, 7, 18, 21 Voltaire, 4 Vulgate Bible, 2, 12, 20, 43, 48 W Wales, 41, 42, 49 Winchester Psalter, 34, 46 Wolf, 105, 106, 108, 114 Women, 1, 5, 10, 18, 21, 57, 61, 63, 67, 71–73, 90, 91, 109, 111, 114, 121, 122